>> you're watching the tv on c-span2. here's our primetime lineup for tonight. beginning at 7:15 p.m. eastern, christopher wolf discusses this on the internet and his thoughts about what can be done about it. then the director of the program on energy security on climate change at the council on foreign relations presents a plan for future energy use and he sits down to discuss surprising mistakes that scientists have made on their way to historic achievements. following that at 10:00 p.m. eastern, a panel discussion on walker evans and his unpublished article. we conclude tonight programming

at 11:00 p.m. with a 1959 discovery which decades later led to the realization that it is the sole cause of a certain type of leukemia and that all happens tonight on c-span's booktv. >> up next james o'keefe appeared on "washington journal" to discuss his book breakthrough is about 45 minutes. >> i want to welcome back to our table james o'keefe who is here with a new book to expose fraud and save democracy and what do you do and why do you do it? >> guest: it is a strategy that we use for citizens investigate and expose waste and fraud and abuse in government institutions and its guerrilla because we are not really dependent upon

traditional techniques with the information you utilizing facebook and twitter and spending our own money and we have individuals that are taking on a vast media machine is an asymmetrical warfare. >> how do you do it. walk us through deciding to send in what some people call undercover actors and you have said how we decide what you're going to do and how you do it. >> we get sent dozens of ideas all the time. people send me a tip on the website. i tend to want to visualize things for people. i want to take issues and show people kind of what happens when people are looking for in one

case, we want to visualize the whole economic problem in this country where we refill them. so he digs ditches and fills them back in again. these are the sort of things that we were thinking we reduce. >> why do they call call them investigative journalists in the are they full-time employees or are they undercover actors that you have paid to go and. >> their reporters that get paid just like any other news corporation. the we call them journalists because there is a long story of tradition of investigative journalism throughout the 20th century. geraldo rivera, some of the people at the newspapers in the 70s and 80s who won awards and just recently mother jones magazine won a polk award for doing nothing but disturbing

this and he is a journalist and the guy who loved mitch mcconnell is considered a journalist and some reason the media doesn't consider us as a. >> we have been called activists instead, this is activism and not journalism, how do you distinguish between the two? >> i think it's something that you do in journalism is not something that you are. it is a means to an end and you're getting information out there. so we release full raw video and c-span is closest to releasing this because we have long segments. >> we actually don't have reporters there to clarify that. >> but you do have employees that do your segments and we pay

our citizen reporters and we contract out when they are volunteers. but we release the full video to accompany this. i would argue that what we do is closer than anything else. a lot of these other journalists pay package stories and they manipulate headlines and they assume things and we can show you the tape and let you decide. >> host: here's a quote from national review about the book. he said i liked being hated more than i liked being liked and that is one again really began. or did you mean? >> that was a quote that i gave that breitbart said in time magazine. so is utilizing again. >> was applied to you? >> to a certain extent. no one really in their heart loves to be hated so deeply. it is actually a sign of respect when they hate you.

they tend to have a love-hate relationship. but it is difficult sometimes and other times if you look at the book reviews for this breakthrough, it is all positive and the only negative reviews of calling you racist and these types of things, to be called a racist comment to be called this come about as a sign of success and that is how you are doing your job right. i have been called everything and it is hard. but then after a while you breakthrough it. and you survived.

>> mass culture? spirit i have just turned 29 and you started this at what age? >> welcome in the book starts when i was about to turn 21 years old when i started an independent newspaper at the first scene in the book about colleges and this is the dean of the student affairs and she says they respectable journalist does not cause all this problem. >> is this a biography? >> it is a little bit of a field manual and it has been called a thriller novel and a political book. and can join in on this as you traipse around the country as it's been prosecuted and it

starts off for a crime you didn't commit. it is not retrospective. and it is a fast-paced mental for doing what we have to do. >> guest: well, this is a republic. >> host: what are you saving them from? >> especially tea parties who say, well, what we are trying to do is bring power back to the people and i believe that they have taken our public officials that have used the power we have lent them and they are extraordinary mechanisms in place to prevent them from reclaiming the power. so the only way that i can see is not even through voting anymore, it is through exposure and it is the best disinfectant, sunlight. we expose the fraud and every time we do it, we outraged people and people are excited. they want to get involved in the

democratic process. getting people involved, giving them back their voice. >> where the rules are coming from? >> well before he became as much of a household name as he became when he inspired bill clinton and president obama, i decided to create the truth rules. these are rules i have learned as we find our way through legal times that i don't believe many journalists have found their way through. they're all of these different rules. always make sure that he was extract the tape and they will accuse you of doing anything and people will believe it. this is just a simple rule that we live by. it made all the difference,

apparently. the other rules include this, but never spend any more than 24 hours in washington dc beltway. this is something that i have learned with the fire had to face here in washington dc. >> you are here today because the probation was lifted back in may. he said that i haven't heard 1212 days of surveillance and oppression into the i am a free man. can you explain to those that don't know it is incredible and tragic story about how the federal government is walking into a federal building whether or not they were ignoring the

phone calls and assuming that is something that is wars and they arrested me and the federal judge to we do the contents of the recordings that no one could see that i was actually going to do this. i sentenced to three years of probation with travel restrictions and finds in community service. a judge, u.s. attorney and the probation officer. >> you are accused of? >> i was accused of a felony and they dropped that charge and it was a signed affidavit saying that i did not commit a felony. however the crime actually charge me with was eventually entering a federal building using false pretenses because i showed my drivers license.

my actual crime was to say to the senator that i am waiting for somebody and in fact i was not. that was my time to make a missed damon, which is an observed crime in charge and it was really more of a political prosecution that the doj is not protecting mitch mcconnell, yet they held in captivity for three years and i was able to continue doing my journalism. >> we will talk more about that. but i want to get the viewers involved. chris is calling from california, democratic call. please go had. >> thank you. can you hear me? >> you are on the earth. >> please go had. >> okay. thank you for what you're doing. >> caller: we need investigation and we need to it expose the fraud in government. so i've been doing some investigating of government thought myself and i found a

number of blatant frauds on the collapse of the world trade center building seven. would you be in interested in investigating these frauds? >> guest: i can't guarantee that we will get to everything. there is apparently a huge demand for journalism. but send us anything that you have. i cannot guarantee. we need to do what we do, we need to apply the secret sauce, as we say. but please go ahead if you have any ideas or tips. enter your kid into our tip line. >> okay, we are going to port richey, florida. hello. >> hello, good morning. >> i have a cold, please bear with me. i am amazed that james o'keefe is on and i'm so glad he has now

been released. i had him on the program in years past and i would like to ask the gentleman if he has seen some of the situations having gone on recently with mr. snowden. also the book he is writing, can you tell us who the publisher was on our book and what does he do to protect himself from the government now in terms of who is his his attorney representative. >> host: okay, james o'keefe. >> guest: simon & schuster is the publisher. i think the best is sunlight, publicity, just like how i

described journalism as an effort to empower the american people, i think the best way to protect myself is certainly through exposure. it is through letting people know what is going on. it is not really the direct threats that we have to worry about. it is the indirect threats, it is the lawsuit. lawsuits. it is the prosecutions. there is one case back in new hampshire that we just did for a for your request into some of what the state department of justice talks about. they were working with federal agents, the fbi, the department of justice in massachusetts. federally they are trying to come and shut this down. so they have tried to wear us down through the legal system. and that is what this book is all about you can make this

difference it is good that the people have that information and i hope that we get more information out there as well. >> we're talking about the legal hurdles he would and you have had to jump through. that requires a lawyer and paying fines and et cetera. can you give us an idea of how much this is costing and how are you getting money for a? >> we are a tax-exempt nonprofit like most of the organizations here are. the difference between what we do and they do it that most of them do policy research work and so it's sort of a unique intersection between fundraising and journalism and groups like the franklin planner, we don't even believe that is where a

lawyer is cross-examining this in his sworn testimony that i did pay for on my credit cards having to send out e-mails and letters and it's really an incredible story. >> do you have any major donors? >> we are starting to get to that point. it has been $20 times 1000, $100 times 1000. now we do have thousands of small donors and it's really a wonderful business model because it allows independents to do what they want to do. i don't work for a news corporation. i think sometimes the hands are tied and they are not able to break through the muck. they work for people who don't allow it.

>> host: oscar wants to follow up on what you did on twitter. he said have you made any settlement agreements with the employees and if so why? >> guest: he is referring to the legal solomon in california. that was actually over expectation privacy and a two-party consent law so we argued that this was a public area and we have been reading articles from people on the left recently who are against these laws. the aclu came out against these laws and i think that they are unconstitutional and all public officials don't necessarily have the ability to use taxpayer dollars. i settled this because the

motion was denied by a federal judge. it had nothing to do with accuracy, it was over expectation of privacy which was part of this as a gray area. >> host: this book is, when he asked the question, you have put this out as rules for people to follow, part of that comes with the cost, as you're talking about. so can you give people who are interested in us an idea of what they face and how it costs money to do what you do. >> guest: sure, i can certainly do that. you see, basically how it works is that we are shaking the halls of congress. and literally, i would be watching c-span and sometimes i would see a congressman attack me because they are trying to discredit our work and it is really something that anyone can

do. the stories and how they retaliate. >> host: can you give us an idea of what it is? >> the settlement was $100,000 and that is not how much i have in my checking account. so i had to beg and plead and i learned how to fund raised by necessity. i do not like it, but it's a means to an end. you know, that is why want people to read this book because they think i could never do ever do that, that's not what i do. but people began begging to give us money. they want to help us. it's not a zero-sum game, hundreds of people out there. and they need to know how to do it and the price you have to pay.

>> good morning. >> think it is c-span. this man is a total fraud. this man is home and the office of new orleans. they claim that there was a problem with the system and one other question we would like to ask him, is he a member of the john birch society that is a new corporation company. >> host: let's give james o'keefe a chance to respond. >> guest: i can doublecheck that, but john birch organization, no, as far as i can see it as the boy scouts of

america and the third thing about that, like i said, there is a long tradition going into places like mental institutions and exposing abuses that happened there. there is actually a case that the new york daily news reported the quake i actually went to city hall posing as a telephone repairman and he was a winner of journalism awards. the element of false pretenses, abc primetime live, they went into grocery stores and have actually imposed and got jobs to expose the rotten meat. so daniel ellsberg is a hero. but i am apparently the worst person in the entire world for

using this pretense while inside a federal building. i think we need to be consistent because we are consistent. i have defended these whistleblowers. i wrote an op-ed and i said that the punishment is part of the crime. and we shouldn't be attacking journalists we should be defending everyone's freedom of speech. we should be examining whether this misdemeanor that they have now is part of the pretenses. if it's certainly not. >> good morning, mr. o'keefe. you are very articulate and you have one of the largest egos that i've seen on this program in my several years. the subtitle of your book sounds like the opening to the old superman television series, leaping tall buildings in saving

humanity from itself. you'd think very highly of yourself and what you do. what i think is that you are part of the internet-based video and you are part of this and you mentioned breitbart. he has no journalistic standards, he exposes that poor woman showing an out of context section of speech and he ruins her life, her job at least. you, sir, you are not a journalist, you keep describing yourself as a journalist. journalists have ethics and they have editors who discuss these things and they care. you have used muckraking and determine it's nothing wrong with that, but mike wallace and goes and confronts people in the past tense, he went and confronted people on camera in

those days and exposed it the right way and edward are moral. you are neither of those comments are. >> host: okay, james o'keefe. >> guest: okay, so i'm not mike wallace, and james o'keefe. but when you combine a number of genres and influences, i don't understand this fight over who's a journalist and who is not. it sounds like a cartel. there's a famous speech that was given about 15 years ago and i saw the same type of attacks launched at him for not being a journalist. plenty of journalists get their facts incorrect and i have had defamation lawsuit settled. i settled on. i have gotten money from journalists were defang me.

so i am being lectured about fairness and accuracy. i have called upon journalist to release their transcripts and this this week i went to confront the journalists and ask them if you would release this in the transcripts. so i think the journalist told me to a higher standard than they hold themselves. and i just want some consistency and fairness. i'm happy to release my tapes but they don't want to release theirs. it is all a semantical fight about who is a journalist and who is not. journalism is something you can do. sometimes you can do it by accident and other times you do it on purpose. that we should support more information. why those want less information, it speaks volumes. >> you have said you have this

label of being a conservative. but have you or the project sought out conservative programs to expose? >> i don't consider exposing governments and abuse and negligence to be liberal. if government journalism is conservative and we have greater problems in our country, i mean, the entitlement programs like the lifeline program that is federally subsidized through corporate subsidies, if they are telling people that they can sell to buy drugs -- to investigate that is not to engage in activism but watchdog journalism. to the notion that that is the first time i've heard anyone admit anything about this

government-funded organization like planned parenthood. in one case we ran over olympia snowe and she is republican. another case we went over and exposed those in the ballot, some of them were republican. the targets tend to skew left because we go after these programs and a lot of people in the community have told me that they are well-intentioned programs and you should never investigate so-called good organizations with well-intentioned. >> host: let's show our viewers some of the video of wireless company employees passing out these lifeline phones that have been called obama phones. two undercover actors or investigative journalist, those associated with the project. please take a look.

>> [inaudible] >> host: what was the outcome of that. >> fox news reportedly fired the worker that you just saw and there was a couple of other workers that said that they could plead the fifth and it's ironic because that is what lawrence lerner said in a follow all of these workers and they say that we are going to retrain every worker. by the way, we didn't do this a lot, we just did it a couple of times. imagine dozens of workers. it gets to a point where they say these are just low-level employees and i would actually say it's not really the employees that you just saw, it's not their fault, it is the management and it is the system and it's the culture of washington that pumps the subsidies into these private companies and ceo, they get an

incentive to give out phones and in the case of these companies, one company doesn't know what the other companies going to do. so you can get six to eight and you call them obama phones and some are saying that they got up to eight of them. this is corporate welfare, big business together. >> host: we have an independent caller. go ahead. >> caller: i am wondering if you are looking into what is your plan with [inaudible] story. >> host: i'm not familiar with that plan, but go to project veritas.com. i cannot guarantee that i'll get to it, but senator ted, need resources and funding, but i do get to about one major story a month. this claim about being a legitimate journalist, it sounds

like there is a cartel set to prohibit people. i want more information and i think that people on the left and right should want more information. i do not understand people on the left and how they shut down outside journalists. it doesn't matter who you are or where you come from. it is always a good thing if you're getting more information out there, so far that you are not crossing the line. >> host: there is project veritas.com and also project veritas.org, and i assume that is your fundraising website? >> guest: they are one in and the same that we have a couple of different urls. >> host: is greenwald a hero or a villain like snowdon? >> host: that's a good question. i think that greenwald is a hero and he is doing great work and i saw david gregory asking if he

aided and abetted edward snowden. so you have this, he is being asked if he is basically committing a crime and that is exactly the type of behavior that we face, this sort of mainstreaming of the criminalization and the journalism and they have also talked about his personal life now and we have seen that happen and i think that the question about edward snowden is the least important question. it is a discussion and maybe it was an interesting discussion on the but that is not one that we should even be having. the discussion is what is going on with the information. and i just don't think that the punishment matches the crime here. you talk about spending decades in jail, maybe being in jail for life. i don't think he deserves that punishment. he probably did cross a line. one that i've never crossed insofar as he violated the contract and broke an agreement.

i've never done that before during my exposure. so he should be punished, but not to the extent that the government will punish him. but let's have this information. this is a deflection, what about what the other person said about trafficking and underage prostitutes in the united states? and you talk about the fact that i film someone without permission. this is an example post back we have an independent caller on the line. >> caller: good morning. good to speak with you again. we are thankful for c-span and what it does for the american citizens. i would like to say first of all the problems that we have, what this gentleman is talking about

and the other things that are going on, trying to expose the things. and as we look back at president obama's initial appearance, we find that there is no promise of transparency and exposure. the problems that we face and that we see, of course, they are being expressed in terms of whistleblowers, and i'm glad that he is part of this package with the news media, trying to expose some of the problems that result in corruption. >> host: whistleblowers have this protection act to fall back on. journalists also, we are referring to the constitution.

what does your lawyer argued? >> we have no protections whatsoever in that it's a very important point that you just made. this is why the discussion is so important depending on this, you we have certain protections and it is literally a semantical and arbitrary distinction of the department of justice has drawn. some people have first amendment rights and other people do not. the question is if it is entirely political. it is worse than the violations of the fourth amendment. because if we lose our fourth amendment rights, then we lose the ability to expose this. and we are calling it a great point that a lot of the big stories you're seeing today are from people on the frontlines because they have a camera and there's a big story, one was done on mitt romney who happen to put his camera on a table and there was a big story and he broke the biggest story of the presidential elections.

so if you don't give protections to people who are accidental journalist, it will really be bad for government transparency. >> host: patricia, welcome to the conversation. >> caller: thank you. it is simply a huge hypocrisy. i want to point out to c-span also. there is a man calling and claiming that mr. o'keefe is a fraud and so forth. last time there was an abc reporter and i was criticizing journalism for not covering where president obama was during the vendor has the attacks. scully stomp on me and i couldn't even get two sentences out for he stepped on my feet. so it is a huge hypocrisy and the man who flew out your guess, you let him go on and on like i

have never seen before. your guest is proposing things on the left in the right and middle. if he attacks the left, you let people call and unclean things that aren't true and you ad hominem. it really does not allow free speech. not ken sully, but he really stomped upon conservative speech. i don't even call him anymore because he doesn't even let me finish a sentence. >> okay, going on to chris in greensboro. >> caller: my question is if republicans are racist. >> host: why do you ask them what is your point? >> caller: because i feel like they target people because of the color of their skin. >> host: okay, james o'keefe?

>> guest: i am not a republican, so i don't know if that question is for me. but we had expose racism. one of our investigations actually, you should check it out, it is called teachers gone wild and we went undercover into the leadership conference at the national education association in new jersey and the teachers are talking about the fact that they are using racial slurs against kids and they could use those and not get fired. then he went undercover and share the fact that one superintendent said if you said a bad word to a kid, i would not fire the teacher well, we had expose racism in all types. we went to planned parenthood and the investigation there and found some arguable racism there that lead to led to the termination of one of their vice

presidents. i have been involved in exposing this and a couple of different institutions and we have actually had people resign for admittedly saying or doing racist things. that is the best that i can come up with in response to your question. >> host: a republican caller from new jersey. >> caller: yes, i think the public has been shocked with the level of corruption throughout the federal government. the people cannot claim today that the same is a result of partisans. the multimillion dollar parties, can you give the public an idea and how much fraud is there in the federal government? how much waste? and know that it is probably at best a guess. >> guest: you can probably use mathematics to try to answer that question.

they're doing things that the government will condemn. if everything were to be exposed, they could fire all of these employees. but if everyone is doing the same practice, at that point, everyone on the left and i would agree to the system is completely screwed up. it needs to be reformed. finally people at the top would be held accountable and that's not going to happen, but we are going to continue to say it is isolated and it's remarkable how many people get fired and the laws are changed and people just want to go away and focus on this road.

it is not road, it's a matter of basic mathematics every employee that i talk to is engaging in fraudulent behaviors. >> host: would his neck >> host: what is next with project project veritas? >> guest: hopefully we will do a lot of work with private organizations. we have five investigations going on right now. i am on a book tour and i'm trying to inspire people and get them to not be afraid of what might happen if they do what i do post back how many employees do you have, and do you yourself collect a salary? >> i do. we are a nonprofit. we have a lot of contractors. we have people who don't want to be paid.

we have donors that are afraid to give us money because they're afraid that they will be audited by the irs. people from ordinary normal backgrounds all over the country, they just want to get involved, but they feel like they can't. >> host: we have michael, an independent caller from north carolina the argument is that most seem that the direction that the country you want to go in is not the right direction. i don't think that that is the direction the country wants to go. some of the things that you're talking about is just totally to the left. the country is moving to the

left. the supreme court, the president, and now you look at the house of representatives. republicans. look at the president. he said obamacare may do more to her than to help. which direction you want the country to go. >> host: we believe that they are. >> guest: here is my response. one of the great things about what we do, which makes us different than the other institutions in washington dc is that i cannot tell you what to believe. i do not tell you what direction our country should go in many journalists spend all of their time telling you what to believe and why you should believe it. i just expose the truth. i shoyu realities. you make the decision and you make the call. what you have done has prompted

president obama to sign a bill in congress based upon what he saw and what congress ought. so we give you more information and letting them make the decisions for themselves. i don't understand narratives being shut down one's throat, that is not my role. my role is to give you more information so you can make up your mind. if you take a look at some of our stories, you will probably be outraged at what you see. so it's my role to give you more information. i believe in you and you have to have more information. >> host: if you could go back and do anything differently than what you have done, what would you do? >> guest: well, i probably would've thought a misdemeanor in louisiana and i would not have pled guilty to it. i never imagined in my dreams

that they would've held me in captivity for three years. my lawyer told me he had never seen anything like that before. the u.s. attorneys resigned a few years later for the overzealous behavior. i thought it was a misdemeanor and they had no curiosity at all about this nature of the offense. ..