gray. we get a lot from what we built together. our checks clear, roads meet, public speech is a glorious example of the cooperation, but it's invermontble, taken for granted, and it makes people susceptible to politicians saying you may be scared of the other people and even better if you listened to me and strangled the government in the bathtub, and we have to figure out ways to peel off people -- some people are that way, very, very wealthy people are lobbying, spending money to basically have the government pay them. they rely on great masses of people diluted by propaganda. we have to figure out how to address that.

>> back to the kids. is there a generation of 8 or 9-year-olds capable of doing what those kids did then? particularly, wrarches to the common core, force feed confidence in the generation coming up, are we losing any way of them in the history, the culture that they are going to need to -- >> question are de-emphasizing citizen in the core curriculum in the united states. you could turn it around and say, if you're in my generation and benefited, i think the breakthrough in birmingham in 19633 # opened up doors for equal citizenship for young

people doing something for us, we do something for them to restore education and really studying and not approaching young people on the basis of what we may have heard. some young people are far more liberated and natural in their views and apt kuwaited prejudices, and they are free of them, but some are trapped in them, and they are not educated. we have to encourage the good part and try to rescue our education so that it makes the kind of citizenship example pertinent today. >> we have teachers to do it? >> have we got teachers to do it? we have some. best teachers today, i think one of the saddest thing -- i'm not an expert in education. i just met enough teachers who were heroic, to me, gosh, i met teachers in idaho, mormon,

idaho, teaching civil rights history, and at ten o'clock on sunday night, they are googling diane nash to find something to present to their teachers, to their students the next day that would be accessible. they are heroic, but in demand. in many republics, we flip into the notion we accept the idea that being a teacher is more less like being a military draftee was in the 1950s. you can only do it for four years, and then you're burned out. they are heroic, but we do not, as a whole society treat teaching and both the content and the professional core and life of it with the seriousness that it deserves if it governs our future in the information age.

>> how do we reclaim making it clear it was one of the key progressive voices of the time? >> great question. everybody hear that? dr. king repackaged by everybody. how do we go about reclaiming the genuine? first of all, i believe personal stories are the key to that. if you reduce somebody to a concept or idea or label, then it can be reputed with another label, and you can have ralph reid, like the other day, saying dr. king's whole career was about saying that it's only the content of your character and that it was a movement of families and not about politics and public change. when anybody studyied the career

for five minutes, knowing i have a dream one day this nation will rise up and live out the meaning of its creed delivered on the mall. he came to the mall to do that. this is about our public purpose. just to say that, you know, that he is an anti-government person too is preposterous, but that's what happens when you -- when we and they reduce everything to sound bites. the stories are key. pick the stories to relate to. one of the reasons i was upset to try to put down a story tell r record of the period, is that story telling things, things that are human are harder to refute. that's why we are all internally grateful that in the depression that the roosevelt administration took those oral histories of slaves, the few remaining slaves that could talk from personal experience what it was like. otherwise, slavery was an idea,

and it was as vulnerable to anybody else's counteridea they were well off and all happy, but you had personal testimony, ternal testimony matters, and what the rest of us need to do is find a bit of perm story about martin luther king that illustrates the part of them and public ministry and it's there, but we have to do a better job of passing it along. the greatest thing about martin luther king was that he could speak on religion an politics in every speech constantly and never accused of mixing church and state. which is remarkable, and it's because he did it with such an amazing adroitness. you want equal souls? fine. you want equal votes? fine. they both lead to the same place. they both lead to justice. they go through ration. he's not subjecting one to the other, which is how you get in trouble with that, and so there's examples of that, so i

think the best general notion about how you refute the tendency is a proven historical tendency to distort and even invert lessons from race to make them more compatible with what you want to believe is to preserve personal stories that have the truth in them. >> [inaudible] >> and that's all the time we have, i'm sorry. [applause] [cheers and applause] >> thank you. [applause]

>> looked at the corn after it was on the market, and that gene produces an allergen, could die from eating the corn genetically engineered unlabel as an allergen, but that creates a switch on of the gene and it came to 43 other genes as well as changes in the shape of protein. monsantos soy that has a seven-d increase in a known allergen.

this was not intended, but the side effect of the process of genetic engineering, the process used to create the soy in corn that we eat. you know, here are the organizations. world health organization, food safety authority, medical association, no problem with gmos, all of these part of the conspiracy that a person with no scientific training uncovered? telling us all about, and if that is not enough for you, here a bunch of other organizations. these are not organizations that have some sign tifng sounding name, but real, medical, and protective organizations. in europe, which is very anti-gmo. in australia, all over the world. there's the epa, which we pay attention to when it comes to global warming or something like that. they say would not pose up reasonable risk to human health and the environment. i could come up with dozens of

needs. >> at the washington offices, aei hosted a discussion about al-qaeda. this is an hour and a half.

>> good morning, everyone. [inaudible conversations] or just the very beginning of good afternoon. i think we can get going if we can break up some conversation over there, a little bit? thanks. okay. i want to thank everyone for coming out on a beautiful day, coming inside to the windowless -- well, we have windows, but we covered them for some reason, i'm not entirely sure of, but thank you, all, for coming out to talk about our usual happy topic, i'm fred, the director of the critical project, and we've been working on al-qaeda, and especially on the various al-qaeda affiliated movements around the world for a number of years now, and this,

unfortunately, is a topic that does not show any sign of diminishing in importance, and it is getting evermore complicated to understand because, unfortunately, what we're finding is that a lot of the affiliates and associates are ramifying in their local areas, and both expanding and interacting with one another in new ways, so it is a major, political undertaking simply to try to follow what's going on. let alone coherent assessments of the strategy, let alone coherent recommendations for what one might do instead, and just to take that off the table, that's one thing that you're not going to get today. here's the strategy for defeating al-qaeda, and that is something that is -- we're working on it, a lot of people are working on it, but it's going to take quite a lot of

effort. we're here today to focus on trying to understand what we're talking about when we say "defeating al-qaeda, fighting al-qaeda," what it is, what it is not, and what the implications of that definition are. i'm thrilled to be able to introduce a very good friend, an old friend, known each other for decades. back when we were both soviet military specialists and mary, then nope as the tank lady, because of the financial expertise on the doctrine, doing terrific work, also, unfortunately, becoming relevant once again. just for those of you per suing

topics, young people in the audience, asking yourself, will anyone care about this, those of us who graduated in the 80s and # 90s with degrees in soviet studies, know, yes, pretty much everything is important if we wait long enough. i wish we could have waited longer for that one. that's a topic for another discussion. mary, devoted her life for quite a number of years now to understanding al-qaeda, to the ideology, and understanding the group as it is. we are thrilled to publish a report, getting it right, u.s. national security policy and al-qaeda since 2011, she's written a number of other books including an excellent primer on al-qaeda called "knowing the

enemy," and she's working on, i don't know, four or five other books simultaneously that should be coming out shortly, and mary has done a fantastic service for us to talk about in trying to identify what people seem to mean when they say al-qaeda, particularly people in the administration, and then talking wouldn't what she thinks is should mean. after mary speaks, we'll have katherine zimmerman speak. cay diane nash is our al-qaeda team lead at the critical press project, and she's been staring at this problem for number of years now, and there's another report on the al-qaeda network, describing how the -- how we should think about the relationship between core and prief rei because that's become really, really pivotal question,

and for u.s. policy, but before i turn it over to mary and before we start talking about that, and bruce hoffman tried to drive on the gw parkway, i gather, so he'll join us when traffic permits. before turning it to mary, step back and say, there's a certain amount of sound and furry on al-qaeda, whether we win or lose and how it's all going. there are things that are generally agreed upon, and then there are things that are argued about. what is -- you won't find a lot of people who will say that al-qaeda in the peninsula in yemen is defeeted, not a threat, not fighting, incapable, you won't find people who say that at this point. you won't find them saying the islamic state, al-qaeda, iraq

has not regained, obviously, we know they regained footholds, but the truth is they regained foot hots around iraq. no one argues there's large al-qaeda affiliates in syria. that was one of the reason given traditionally for why we don't support, i don't find it a persuasive reason, but that's an argument made. thatst a large and powerful franchise, and it's clear with operations in north africa that we have a vibrant franchise in al-qaeda, and so on and so on. the question of whether we have affiliates out there and whether they continue to be strong or capable is not really in question. the real question that our policy debates focus around is just the united states needs to care. how much of a problem is it for us if these local groups do well

or poorly, and is this something to be concerned about, and that is how do local groups relate to what the administration group calls al-qaeda core, the group around formally bin laden, after his demise around what is the role of al-qaeda core, even appropriate to talk about al-qaeda, and i flag that because that's what we will talk about today. i want to point out that that is an argument that's on, in many republics, on the margins of the question of how is the al-qaeda global threat doing these days? this is we're we're going to get into the inside baseball, but it's important when developing strategy. we have to recognize pretty much everyone recognizes that groups formally affiliated with al-qaeda, like groups that call themselves al-qaeda franchises are doing disstressingly well.

around the world. that is where we start and really where the debate begins. i'll turn it over to mary. >> thank you, fred. as fred said, one thing is around the world is in some ways al chi al-qaeda, and really question is, first, how much is this sorted with al-qaeda, and how much is associated with other groups that don't have organizational links with al-qaeda, and secondly, what should be our response to the problem? that's what i will focus on, but i outlined for you the begins where fred said we face a much more difficult problem today

than in 2011. 2011 began with so much hope with the arab spring and death of the maven who helped carry out 9/11. if you look at just two sets of illustrations in our paper on pages five and six, i outline and show growth in violent in the muse line up majority world associated somehow with al-qaeda, not just in terrorism, but talking about indeath penalty, but in insurgencies, and it's here where majority of the work for the paper was done back in the summer, and then i revised it again in january, and i show that there are now at least in january, there were nine insurgencies when back in 2011, we were dealing with three

al-qaeda associated insurgencies. a growth from three to nine from 2011 to 2014. actually, i was kind of calledded to task by a friend of mine who is an expert on the issues as well who said, redo that because we're now facing at least two more countries that are sunk deeply into insurgencies since i revised this, and that's libya and rest of egypt, and here i show sinai sunk in an embedded insurgency. as fred says, there's really no argument we're facing, and certainly since we're facing in 2001, when it comes to groups that at least have some sort of affiliation with al-qaeda i beginning with the very tearful,

you know, set of remarks on this i'm not blaming, per se, any administration's policies for the growth in this violence. there are all sorts of other factors that are involved in the growth of this, and remember the enemy has a vote, and the enemy has been doing things that have led to a lot of the increase in violence, and there's other factors that allow vieps to grow. please do not take that second section as pointing to any growth in violence. having said that, however, we have better policies to deal with the new threat we are facing since 2011. i point out, in particular, two key issues, and i think in

particular, you can look back and find roots for it in the bush administration, the suggest bush administration as well, that are preventing us from designing this with al-qaeda. how do we define the enemy? i think we have to, in order to understand where any administration is on this issue, look at what they are saying about it. there's the national security strategy that came out in 2011 for countering terrorism that quite carefully defines al-qaeda as three parts, al-qaeda, affiliates, and adherence. my concern with that definition was, obviously, with the first part, which was actually never defined in the strategy itself. al-qaeda is al-qaeda. well, okay. what do you mean, actually, by

that? i went looking for that definition amongst all of the statements made by this administration including heads of the cia, dni, mctc, homeland security, and a range of other folks to see if there's a clear, public definition to see what constitutes al-qaeda itself rather than the adherence, and result was i could not find a clear definition, but i couldn't find a clear definition until january of 2014, but by piecing things together from the statements and the way the current u.s. government understands the role of the u.s. in the world, i was able to come up with what i believe is the official definition, and in january of this year, that was confirmed by a public statement

by matt olson in the testimony before congress. that definition is that al-qaeda core, as it's sometimes calledded, consistents of all of those people who participated in some way in 9/11. if you go and take a look at the authorization for the use of military force, that is, in fact, how al-qaeda was defined legally back in september of 2001. this administration, above all else, is concerned with the rule of law, and doing things in a very legal manner. they've -- they have a sincere and firm commitment to that, and i take them at their word. that is what the amf, as it's called, authorization use of military force, says about those people that the united states

can use military force against, and so having said that, shouldn't it also include, perhaps, all those people who replaced those folks? who have been killed off since 9/11 in there's been probably several thousand people killed off by first the bush administration and this administration, and in their attempts to deal with al-qaeda, and i actually found a public statement that also says, no, in fact, people are not being added to that list of people who belong to this, and there was a statement, actually, back in march, that firmly states, we are about to strategically defeat al-qaeda because we're down to just a handful of al-qaeda members that need to be dealt with through attrition, that is through killing or capturing them. that's the official definition of al-qaeda itself. there's the view of al-qaeda subjectives. subjectives are defined primarily in terms of u.s.

national interests. that is, al-qaeda has its primary objective, kill americans and attack americans, but, in fact, if you look at what al-qaeda says about their objectives, you come to a different conclusion, al-qaeda itself says their goals are, first and foremost, to chase the united states out of what they term their lands, and, secondly, to impose a very extreme extremist and unique version of sharia on unwilling muslims, and secondly, great a shadow government, and, thirdly, overthrow what they call a leaders of their country, and then, finally, to create something they call the state, and most of what they want to achieve has nothing to do with the u.s. at all. it has everything to do with them imposing their will on the rest of the muslim majority world and on very unwilling muslims. you can see this, as i do in my

book, by taking a look back at what al-qaeda has been actually doing since the 1990s to today, and they've been focusing, vast majority of the efforts, on, in fact, taking over territories and imposing their extremist version of sharia rather than attacking the united states. the never commission report knows that 99% of the effort in the 1990s was dedicated to creating those to carry out extremist plans in the rest of the world, and only 1% was dedicated to attacking the united states. in my opinion, this second administration vision is also askew, which, in my opinion, also -- and i explore this in great depths throughout the book, explains why the policy that is based on these two assumptions is flawed as well. ..

that it tends to get at this scale and scope of the problem we are actually facing. before you take a look get that, you should know that i affirm and support a lot of the policy preferences that underlie some of this definition and some of these assumptions. i also want to see the u.s. be a will to take this fight from something that involves the

military to something that is just law enforcement. that is absolutely my policy preference. i want to see our troops come home. i want to see an end to war. i don't want to see a militarization of something that does not need to be militarized. i affirm and support that policy preference and it underlies a lot of what the of masturbation is saying. i also affirmed support the need for partners who will be encased in a fight and not be dependent on us in order to carry on the struggle that mostly involves their country, their land. as an aside, the united states has lost thousands in this fight with al qaeda. a muslim majority countries are losing hundreds of thousands. so this is a fight that obviously we need to have partners and people working with us. this is not about us taking over and running things.

i affirmance support that policy preference. we cannot let our policy preferences drive reality. our definitions of what really is going on. i am afraid that is, in fact, what is going on. we are not looking first as a problem set and allowing that to determine policy, but what we want to be true, what would would like to see determiner definition of the enemy. getting those definitions right understanding who our enemy really is an understanding what his objectives are should be what drives our policy regardless of whether that leads to the kinds of policy preferences that we actually want. thank you. [applause] >> thank you. i would like to follow up on your conclusion that we actually

need to be understanding what the enemy is that is assigning al qaeda properly in order to have a strategy to fight it. and i think that take away that i got from your report was that because we have improperly defined al qaeda, we are only fighting a fraction of burned and if force and not only that but in no way that actually is in fighting the enemy itself. to me that sounds like losing strategy, and i think that what is most helpful is to talk through how al qaeda is operating, how it has adapted the some of our policies and why it is important we start looking at the network is often, the affiliate's, the associates, and 7n preventing yourself, a different meaning the stanley bring in different light than been.

in my report that i wrote in september is that the network itself extends across the muslim majority world, and it is their relationship between the different groups, affiliates and the core group in pakistan, affiliate's and the local group of thugs upon him there rely for resources, support, ben two are also at times just as dangerous as the affiliate's themselves, but make the al qaeda network so resilient woman. it is not have the wheel and spoke model that we have heard about before where they're is a central group that you can pound away, and once you get rid of that the folks will simply fall apart and become their own mobilized insurgencies are threats. it is not the starfish model where it has spread its tentacles and a few chopped off

one to do you have started to kill the beast in some sort of way. instead, it is this network that if you push down in one area, it will support itself and the will to pop up in areas where it has historical presences and all some move resources, fighters, expertise, france from one area and to another which is actually what we are seeing today happening in syria where all of a sudden see area reinvigorated the al qaeda network in a way that we have not seen since we were fighting in iraq. so what does that mean? that means that if we continued the only focus on the group's that pose the most direct threat to the homeland and only be at al qaeda corps or al qaeda in yemen we are not going to win because in syria al qaeda is

seeing that as a staging ground. it is the primal site for al qaeda today. but the al qaeda core leaders says a committee from pakistan into syria to us serve as a policy planning group to help support the al qaeda affiliate in syria to help it develop trainers, fighters, and policies on the ground in order ten seed victory. that is a very forward leaning organization, and that is an organization that is not covered today. but al qaeda sees a serious as something that will, in the end, bring about the islamic heritage which is where they dry out the apiology. the teaching, the setting the stage for what they see. the other place where al qaeda has adapted is it no longer uses

its name as a brand mark. it is certainly extremely powerful. we see it in al qaeda in the arabian peninsula, the group in yemen, the group that has a tap dance at least three times since it announced itself in 2009. but the two most recently recognized affiliate's have not adopted the al qaeda name palin nor are they likely to. one of the reasons is that the al qaeda name actually brings about an american action. in reaction to us simply naming a group al qaeda. and now will turn them to the region much as one of the best pieces that have seen recently. we just put out home a slide back in march available at critical fetes wish points at in detail how these groups are operating, but you can look at

al qaeda affiliate that has been operating car revolutionized how it is working. and as the conflict broke out there were local groups that began fred -- fighting. tonight connections to a al qaeda, never at a public relationship with a qi am, but uncovered correspondence from the associated press recovered which showed meeting notes where leaders were literally sitting down and figure out how to maintain their relationship and keep it covered. that means we have not caught on many people did not consider it to be part of the al qaeda network, but from what i can see it actually was the fighting force on the ground, and we have tasked with governing the local be villages and actually being

that local space that age i am does not have. it has gotten to the point now where when you look at who the leader was, he had been active and interacting for many, many years. he was not someone who simply of a sudden said, hey, i'm al qaeda now which is something that we need to recognize in our own policy and definition. they're is a group of leaders said and not operating under official al qaeda titles. we may not have the al qaeda numbers. the most threatening person. in fact, may be the leader of a group that seems local but his serves as a facilitator and anita start thinking about the group's out by what they call themselves but by how they

interact formerly with the network and what they are doing, what actions are taking to a surf al qaeda purpose and think of other groups as something that has changed today. we cannot let our strategy simply by. that is one of the key ways i have seen al qaeda adapt. has obscured its relationship, prevented us from reacting to its new-found relationship by hiding how its tentacles have actually reached out throughout. i think i am going to and their and leave it up to questions. i can talk at great length about how these groups are interacting and sharing resources and fighters in syria, yemen, somalia, west africa. but at risk of boring the audience. >> thanks. the road that you made it through the washington traffic.

thrilled to have you, really one of the best and most established experts on this topic. and really excited to hear what you have to say. [inaudible] >> these issues for a long time and no her thinking. one thing -- to things actually are quite unique about her work in this respect. anybody talking were speaking on this subject at all, there was a long time when there was very little discourse on al qaeda, when supposedly the arab spring created a change where democracy

possible protest, civil disobedience, the threat that al qaeda was seemed to be nonexistent. secondly, i think this is especially variable. even when people do discuss al qaeda or terrorism in general, so little of the conversation or the dialogue deals with strategic issues. this, i think, mary's strength given her background and also in her dissection and analysis of the al qaeda strategy which i think is absolutely critical and something that is also being neglected. let me just make a few observations in general that i hope will preface. and then drop things together. i mean, the dimensions of the

challenge we face today i best evidenced by the fact that that al qaeda presence caught twice as many countries are places than six years ago the the past several years we have been told that al qaeda is on the verge of strategic collapse and the feet. yet the movement, and enable the to do the impossible, agencies and bureaucracies across the world are shedding personnel and having to make do with less with reduced budgets. al qaeda has been able to reverse and grow and to expand. and i think it is not only the physical presence and the number of fighters, but we see that that al qaeda brand and ideologies has prospered at a time when we were more inclined to count them as having been completely irrelevant, are at least that was a cliche around

the time of the ad. and especially worrisome, not only the extraordinary expansion , but that the court al qaeda in pakistan has remained remarkably resilient, i think, to an extent that few people have imagined. you know, i have written on this often, focused on this, but much of the conventional wisdom of the past decade or more about al qaeda consistently incorrect on so many different levels. the strength of the court is yet another example. court al qaeda as always had a much deeper bench than we have imagined which is why the argument of a strategy that relies very narrowly are almost exclusively on attrition is not one. still within the al qaeda core there are any number of individuals which most in this

room have not heard of. veterans of the afghan-soviet war. at least three decades of experience and a credential to assume positions in the organization. a much this number. also, i think, what has enabled al qaeda to survive what has been the greatest onslaught in history directed against the terrorist group is its ability to constantly adapt and adjust and to overcome and obviate if not perry even the most consequential measures directed against it. and we see that changing demographic of the al qaeda core and al qaeda in pakistan with the stereotypical al qaeda fighter of the past was a posture in tribesmen coming down from the hills with bandoliers of ammunition, satchels and toting an ak-47.

yet to pakistan, means to diversify, insurer its longevity. it is increasingly recruiting amongst middle class, well educated pakistan is. in the months that number, just some of the pakistan is at half a cent increase -- increasing roles a promise. i think overall he has proven to be unfortunately in more effective leader than anyone imagined following the success of bin london. these have to contend with the challenge. and i think actually he has reasserted control over the movement that he still retains with his expulsion, but what worries me not to have enormously is this immense

emerge and rivalry between al qaeda core and the isil which i think this is going to lead to greater competition and we have seen historically. usually they become much more deep and much more active. also, i think, another, for me, development of the past couple of years is how al qaeda global orientation has had a residence basically across the geographical expense while al qaeda is active. seeing groups in north africa, west africa as well as east africa, all not only prosecuting those struggles, but very much into the al qaeda below will in geology and the whole world view which was very clear.

as i said, i want repeat what mary rights, but they think strategically which is why her work is so important. we need to think just as strategically. especially because i think we are really at a critical juncture or crossroads in our struggle. firstly, al qaeda is not only resurrecting itself, become much more relevant than we imagined it could have been a short space of time. because of the syrian civil war, but that will be in game changer . what katie and others have said, certainly the influx of foreign fighters is in and of itself alarming. i think the open source conservative estimates put this number 8,000. reports from our european allies indicate of the past 18 months a steady increase, often exponential growth in the number

of individuals going to syria. one thing that i think is misleading and even more disturbing about that figure, the foreign fighter. many countries are not counting their citizens or residents who are going to syria on humanitarian missions but providing critical, logistical help and assistance. so even that 8,000 figure is on the low side. even in the united states, except for the 30 or so somalia americans that went to somalia after 2008, we have never seen this concentrated outflow of united states citizens and residents going to a g heidi conflict. i would be hard-pressed to name more than a dozen. maybe on one hand basically the americans, chorale kind publicized figures from the fbi,

50 americans who had gone over. perhaps, i think, the greatest challenge in responding to or in embracing the policy recommendations are at least 2-fold. in this respect, the greatest british foreign officer observations about the intersection of domestic and foreign policy in the united kingdom during the 1930's. left or right, everybody was for the quiet life. that is not so different here. on the hill speaking to a congressman whose constituency includes the new york metropolitan area. lost many of his constituents to 9/11 attacks, and he said that raising this whole issue of the al qaeda threat or even in

voting 9/11, he sometimes feels like he's talking about gettysburg. the sun that is the first big challenge. second big challenge is very sensibly, and those who follow the al qaeda challenge and threat for the past decade or more have often argued that responding to al qaeda cannot be narrowly conceived as a counter-terrorism missions. it is about attrition, the israelis often say come mauling blanc. to really make an effect, as we have always argued and long known, a war of ideas, to make a difference, a lasting impact, one has to really change the dynamics of these environments. that, in essence, a strategic approach based on counter insurgency, but i don't think there is any single word right

now. as soon as he starts speaking about things like for an internal the fans, internal defense and development, the kind of combat operations in the fundamentally change in environment and prevent precisely this type resurrection or represses of terrorism. i think a more concrete terms of what we have to do is first step is much more proactively contain al qaeda geographic expansion and growth. in and of itself that is remarkable. containment policy when only a few months ago we were talking about strategic defeat or collapse. this entails a time when we really want to focus and words, the excellent articles, the new yorker reminds us of how the situation in iraq has deteriorated since the withdrawal.

it want to walk away from all of these places but it does demand greater engagement specifically our continued engagement in afghanistan, pakistan, yemen, syria. i think that it also requires more effective pressure on and negotiations with some of our closest allies in the war on terrorism. a lot of the problems in syria emanate along the turkish, syrian border. that means we can't completely turn our back on south asia. the afghan pakistan border. i think again, if anything more pessimistic, we have to be very seriously concerned about the threat of a terrorist attack somewhere, particularly i would argue the terrorist attack involving a chemical weapon.

reported as widely as it might be turkey and the iraq and elsewhere in the middle east, actual sarin nerve gas. that is too much of a cluster of incidents in a specific region and a short time. and, of course, the other al qaeda affiliates, the char all aside chemical stockpile which has become much more serious threat of terrorists using some unconventional weapon in the near future than at any time in recent years. a better capability, the potential expansion. proven fairly in net debt that. the expansion and then finally,

i would say, this is one of the strengths. she underscores the uncomfortable fact that the struggle against terrorism cannot be wished away despite all that and take -- temptations this is an ongoing challenge. al qaeda has strategic vision. [applause] >> thank-you, bruce. thank you to all of the panelists. i will open it up to questions. i want to adjust, a couple of thoughts that are spurred by this. the analysts can pick them up. one is the question of the role

of military force in strategy against al qaeda. i wonder if we have reached the point where we have a hammer and are looking for nails and have to find our strategy against al qaeda to be co expensive with the limits of the aumf because our mechanism for dealing with al qaeda has been attacked. we're looking said of the fact that should not be the 1-to-1 equation. there are one set of tools. we have not been talking enough. another thing that was remarkable that is not remarked upon very much, and i want to mention, the united states has created by policy piece her. the largest sanctuary for al qaeda that the group is ever known for who awhirl half -- we

have created an absolute from the standpoint of our attack in those two countries which is really rather remarkable fifth. lastly we tend to have conversations that are very focused psst. very narrowly scripted u.s. interests and it is important to be able to tie anything related to the discussion with the u.s. military force in any way to narrow the descriptive national security interests, but another thing and has been under very narrow approach to these problems has been of view that it is not our problem fundamentally, not for us to do anything when hundreds of thousands of people are killed, when war is raging across large

portions of an area of strategic importance and atrocities are being committed on mass scale. we need a compelling national security reasons separate from that to be involved. many to have people, including some in the administration suggest that it is in our interest to have a civil war in syria persist because has below was fighting al qaeda and how wonderful is that. of course the problem is morally reprehensible and indefensible. the conflicts themselves and magnets for radicalization. we've made a mistake by going so far all these problems and we

miss the fact that even a realist to have to realize the problems of some of these ostensibly humanitarian crises are creating. but that i will open it to the audience. our ground rules are, wait until the -- raise your hand, wait until a microphone comes to you, identify yourself, and frays your brief statement the form of question.

[inaudible conversations] [inaudible question] as was also mentioned it has produced a situation in which there is rationalization within al qaeda, the dispute between the islamic state. so i was wondering what our panelists thought about how that goes forward and on the one hand

how the organization or even the network, core and the network deal with that and, yes, just how they see the dynamic of that . >> so, my reaction to the arabs praying actually has not changed from 2011 until today. i did a series of talks in 2011i outlined both of those. unfortunately and many cannot law, but many of the countries that experience such as a huge outpouring of help in 2011, we are seeing some of those fears realized. in some cases it is because capable governance were replaced

by less capable governance in counter-terrorism terms and in policing their own borders and in controlling the violence within their own territory. for instance, libya and, right now as far as i know does not even have a government. there is nobody to police the borders are to make sure the violence does not aspire. you first went the replacing of mubarak in egypt there was a lot of hope and that new democratically elected government, but violence was already spiraling in the sinai, even under more see, shows some kind of lack of capacity. it has really gotten out of control since the military has decided to take over. so, again, a very capable

partner is no longer able to police its territory the way that it once was. the one place there is more hope today, i think, and fear is gynoecium. even though you do have a group that claims are has some sort of relationship with the al qaeda ideology, so on and so forth, the violence has not spiraled out of control. there can still be hope. i do believe that unfortunately that was one of the driving factors. the release from prison of thousands upon thousands of people who had been arrested drove a lot of this violence as well in places like egypt. >> well, you know, al qaeda, much like everyone was knocked off balance. the documents that were released

overseas and a lot about that osama bin laden himself was very concerned. al qaeda had been much more adept than almost anyone. al qaeda was no longer relevant. it has not demonstrated relevance across more of africa. it is also, i think capitalizing are taking advantage of some of the developments, greater recruitment. they have been ran out of prison. i am not sure that we have a firm grasp on what the recruitment activities were like during this time when there were tremendous opportunities to recruit folks within the region and foreigners. al qaeda has clearly sees down what was one of the driving forces with the use of social media which is transformative. it is a challenge as well colleges why i think there are

now creating their own english-language magazine. nonetheless, when you see that individual foreign fighters online or are fighting under the black flag and syria, upwards of 24,000 followers. this is one of the best recruitment platforms that one can imagine dan is going to create a situation very different from afghanistan. i mean, the one bright spot as you point out is the fractional as asian, at least the end fighting, which i agree with. as i said earlier if -- responds , who the israelis have one of the clearest views of what actualization creates. they view the fighting is not

necessarily a good thing. so it introduces another element of uncertainty as being an extremely volatile region. it may not play out. [inaudible question] >> well, the court is partly -- well, two things. it is ramping up its involvement and attempting to demonstrate its relevance. one interesting changed when i was talking about al qaeda, pakistan a, lot more of the propaganda has been in arabic. nonetheless, that does not mean it has abandoned. i think that the al qaeda core is biding their time and waiting to see what happens in afghanistan and what u.s. forces are left behind.

and i think it is dead. it will become much more assertive. >> that's the end of that. on the factional as addition. they're used to be a commercial. when banks compete, u.n. in this case i would say when terrorist kids compete you lose. they tend to bid against each other for international support and recognition by doing the most outrageous things that they possibly can do in order to attract attention which is worrisome. i might disagree with bruce about one thing. i think some lori may have made a mistake in expelling as i've -- ssi as. well turn out to be bad because the last thing in the world i want to see are groups like isis start competing in a global stage.

the only thing that is not terrible about them is that they have been focused on their region. i'm not sure they don't win that dogfight over the long term, and i am not sure that he made a good call there. i think he may have misjudged the situation. a question from sarah. >> sarah chase from the carnegie endowment. fred can probably ask this question in my place. but i actually want to pick upon the notion that the egyptian -- current egyptian forces is simply less capable than the mubarak government which is why we are seeing an extension of al qaeda activating in egypt and from there go a little bit more abroad. the question is, the same military, why are they less capable today? is it possible that there is

something else about the current egyptian government that is driving the extension of al qaeda? so i guess where want to take this more broadly, when i have not heard in the discussion to date is whether legitimate grievances against local governments or their perceived packers are not only driving recruitment but some of the ideology. in other words, the description of of version of sharia which is aided by the population. that is not a recipe for success is there something else that we are overlooking and the behavior of some of these governments that we might be tempted to ally with further short-term counter-terrorism capabilities that may not be driving the expansion of.

>> i agree completely. so my comment about capability was not solely about ct capability our military capability. with the ability to find a political solution to the problems that they are facing as well and to include populations that might otherwise have grievances. the first solution that was chosen by the military to some of the popular uprising was a great deal of violence. i have -- i teach a class on a regular warfare where you can go back and look at the onset of the insurgency in multiple, multiple cases and find in nearly every case of a 20th-century and the 21st century of radicalizing which, in fact, is carried out by the government in an attempt to suppress, in many cases what are

perceived by people as being rifle grievances command it is the use of that violence which sets off recruitment, and a lot of people joining up with the insurgency in order to fight it. i don't want to make it sound as of when i use the term capability am talking solely about purely military capabilities, but having said that, on the third hand the release of so many thousands of egyptian and terrorists and people who had been deeply engaged with al qaeda and other violent groups early in the arabs during as well as the sort of loss of visibility about what was really going on in the sinai and the violence that ramp up there was -- i think there was also a lot going on there that

led by people who claim some sort of affiliation with al qaeda in order to, you know, take advantage of this permissive environment which led to a lot of this. >> it warms my heart to it here sarah asked that question. there are few people on the world to have more right to ask that question for continued to focus on it and sarah who was a crusader on this issue in afghanistan at great risk to her life, among other things. had the privilege of being in afghanistan with her for some portion of that time which was a highlight of an otherwise fairly dismal experience. i want to put a short point on that. his agreement. i think that we, because we

don't like to talk about counterinsurgency any more we have lost sight of the fact that this is an insurgency and you don't have an insurgency just because you have a small tiny cell people do are trying to do bad stuff and terrify people. you have an insurgency because i have a significant population with grievances about what is going on that a small, armed group, radical groups can take advantage of and fight back. we saw that in afghanistan. we saw it in afghanistan, and a predatory government. dropping a lot of people. and in syria we're absolutely seeing that. another wonderful case in a horrible way is iraq. it is not possible to question the degree to which the prime minister approach to dealing with what started off as a peaceful protest movements among

the population radicalized it and drove a very unwilling minority back into the arms of al qaeda. but the point goes deeper than that. this is not just about the use of military force on protesters or government escalating but governments that are themselves predatory in terms of corruption , isolating minorities that are excluding people from the franchise that are, in other words, being in ways that make them seem a legitimate. we as a country have been very reluctant to recognize that as a problem. we are especially reluctant when the state in question is supporting us when we are trying to use her hammer and looking for nails. i think that to bring this all the way around.

>> professor, regarding this video i wonder what your thoughts are on the impression of that video and more specifically, a very brazen strike earlier this week. management issues of the past couple of years, could this be another fractionalized asian?

if so, you know, is his inclination to pursue a more g hottest strategy? >> yes. it obviously express's a great deal of confidence that you can have -- i watched obviously the whole video that was put out. at least 100 liters or top people within al qaeda in the arabian peninsula out there, i'm not even sure we know if it is al qaeda on the arabian peninsula, but people obviously gathering together in the open and have a congratulatory meeting about releasing some of their prisoners. that was the purpose.

and to me it expresses confidence. does it shows something about fractionalized asian? in fact now member of al qaeda corporation, part of the central leaders. so on like, let's say prices who were somewhere down hierarchy, he is part of that court's now. and so i do not think it expresses fractionalized addition. this is a statement of confidence. on fractional addition, it is interesting to think about, you know, dealing with a terrorist group, competition leads to greater violence. when it comes to insurgencies it can lead to sort of better outcomes as long as the two insurgencies spend all their

time focusing solely on each other and don't use that as a competition and focus their guns on outsiders in order to gain territory or make some sort of statement for outside supporters one of the key counterinsurgency techniques that people sometimes attempts to practice is sponsoring insurgent groups. in some cases there is contradictory evidence. can lead to the final collapse of the insurgency come but again, there is contradictory evidence. what is most likely to happen, it will move down the scale if there was some sort of competition move down the scale to some sort of terrorist activity in fight its way back up again, even if competition to

its lead to the degrading of capabilities. having said that i have been watching carefully the public statements by people in support of al qaeda central verses statements of support of isis. and the result has been a very interesting change over the past two months from people lining up to support one or the other to a movement of those who once were supporting either a neutral stance or actually supporting al qaeda central. a first wave of people lining up to support the rebels, since then and now last month in particular there has been a movement in the other direction. i think it for me might be seeing al qaeda central, out on top in this argument unfortunately.

>> let me just add to what mary commented on, tension within al qaeda. i firmly believe that we are too focused on figuring out whether there are competitions into the top guy is an essentially waiting for someone to stick his head up high enough. that is not going to be effective. and actually, when you look at this he has been part of al qaeda since before 2001. he was then selected as a personal aide and eventually spent four years next ted osama bin laden before you was arrested, sent to iran and eventually got to see women worry earned his freedom. we can flee to al qaeda core and court al qaeda meeting al qaeda

corporation, a group in pakistan, the senior leaders that we generally think of as al qaeda and scored al qaeda, being as individuals who acted on 9/11 now dispersed across the globe all ascribing to al qaeda etiology and fight for this vision. and they can say this simply because he was in yemen that he was not part of al qaeda corporation when he is heading into does a 7-8. he has always been there. he is simply not formally part of the al qaeda core hierarchy. that to my think, is a very key point to make. if we are looking for guys to it there plenty of people is to get there head. begin finding out who has more power, al qaeda corporation, hq ap to my as is, but at the end of the day it is not who has more power. they are all fighting for the same thing long-term which is will we really need to be addressing. >> just a brief technical note

on the regular warfare aspect of this. i also lawless look at who believes they need to cover their faces and who has no trouble at all showing their faces as an expression of confidence in their own control versus fears of being captured or killed. in that video lots and lots of people have their faces uncovered and have no trouble showing themselves. again, to me, that is an expression of confidence. >> talking about the celebration of al qaeda pretty much across the muslim world. and i wonder if it really makes sense to think of al qaeda as a

manifestation of radical ideologies. anytime there is perspective group anywhere they had got that in theology and the rest of inclines to move forward with the similar organization. so i guess my question is does it make sense to think of al qaeda as a concrete entity that can be defeated or is it really, you know, a broader security problem that should really be managed as opposed. >> in the paper i give a proposed definition of al qaeda that i think it's up where we are really at an hour struggle with this particular crew. that it shares -- just very briefly i define it as an idea or an ideology and an organization. i think the to go to gather. that is, there is an ideology that is behind what they're

doing. in technical terms it is their al qaeda and a particular extremas version. a very unique version that you can power around the love and say those guys are al qaeda and they do not have an adherence to that al qaeda idea. along with that methodology comes an attachment to a strategy that has specific objectives associated with it. when people say ideology, i think they are imagining something kindness but see. the groups i am associating, it is actually quite specific. the ideology has specific things attached to it. the version of sharia that they support has very, very specific things attached to it that differentiated from any other sort of ideology. there are strategy methodology is which have very specific

things attached to it, and it does not matter whether you have command-and-control between these groups that have this attachment to this very specific ideology and of the core as everyone calls leaders because they are committed to the same objectives. and they will cause precisely the same amount of damage regardless of whether there is command-and-control. >> just to add to that i would lay out the challenge of finding a al qaeda affiliate that does not have any personal network that reaches back to al qaeda core or one of the affiliate's themselves. they're is a network. these groups are operating together, and there is coordination, sharing of resources which comes from trust that is not built up by simply saying, i believe in it al qaeda

ideologies. they're is a vetting process which we can see on a small-scale where they come in at times and are rejected because the credentials are not cut enough. they can also see that process coming out in the process of either naming an affiliate for trying to figure out who is part of the network itself. so i do think that is a conception we're going to have. it is a little bit wrong because it does have a network behind it but there is the ideologies. you can build that over time, which is why we need to be looking at what is happening today and not basing it on 2001. >> in the aftermath of 9/11 there is temptation to see al qaeda everywhere. i think this has led to this very unfortunate believe that these are all local problems.

west africa, north africa, they prosecuted by local groups that adopt the name al qaeda because they get more attention. that may be true in some instances. if you look at that document released a couple of years ago, al qaeda in 2004 had already identified nigeria as for town ground for expansion. over the. when they ceased to exist, emissaries, trainers, persons providing intelligence and facilitators, to senior al qaeda officers that were with cows and bob, we killed both of them, but that is not an isolated phenomenon. said al qaeda was active in making these connections in building the network. going back to the previous question about the fractionalize nation, absolutely right to say

that the split -- well, in an aggregate it has benefited court al qaeda because i s. il was quite active in its own emissaries. thisbe was unfolding. attempting to get various forces in the region over to its side and proved remarkably unsuccessful. everyone they approached, one exception to north africa gravitated toward reaffirming their allegiance to a court al qaeda and would not go over to the renegade group. the sophistication of al qaeda core networks in yemen, certainly in northwest and east africa over the past six years. we can say, they ceased to exist and are irrelevant and completely inactive. >> just with that particular example because i think it was incredibly illustrative.

faced a real dutch had moment because it was originally isis that out it formally as a al qaeda affiliate because until they did he have been claiming are not planning but had been trying to maintain a public distance. the civil war is largely a locally focused insurgency or had been. now it has been radicalized. originally it was a locally focused insurgency. he was afraid that if they were identified, not just that we might come after them, but it could harm them with the local people. and it has come in fact, harm the isis with the local people. there have been uprisings and so forth. much more clever about how to manage that. .. pass

telling him, do this right now. stroking a cat. but you do definitely have global resources allocated to various different weighed, and foreign fighters sometimes just show up but there are foreign fighter pipelines. one of the reasons why groups persist in being affiliated with al qaeda even when it's not in their interests locally, is because there's money and

resources attached to it as well, and that goes some way to answer if it's an ideology or just an organization. a question over here. >> i'm from turkey. and i'm a consultant and a tourist in d.c. every page of the tour report has good words about turkey, and they're getting it right so i'd like to ask a question regarding the atp. they would like to call their name -- i think it's a coincidence the name aq is spelled like -- there's a connection there, and i read an article on "new york times" march 19th about the wrong enemy, and in that book, she talks about corporation with

u.s. regarding -- is it possible in turkey, as -- did the same thing, also, i would like to -- on the subject of helping turkish intelligence to syrian al qaeda groups in order giving them the russian armament and using chemicals against sir sir sir syrian opposition in order to involve the united states. >> turkey, good ally or not a good ally in the war on terror or al al qaeda or whatever we think it should be. >> so, to continue the ideology route i've gone down, i should note i began by saying i think it's both an idea -- ideology as

well as an organization. so please don't take that as contradicting. my point was simply that even if you don't see signs of organizational connection or proof of this, that doesn't mean this group doesn't have this connection to al qaeda's core objectives and that, therefore, we can ignore them. that actually brings me to your question, which is that when i look at -- i see a connection more toward an ottoman ideology that is a pan-turkic vision and a desire and work with and protect and do things with turkic peoples around the world, and until very recently a connection, therefore to the ideology of a man named gudan rather than to al qaeda's

vision, sort of global jihadist and very, very specific vision of the world, but that's until dish understand there's been some sort of spat between the two. so my reaction to that is to say, just by using the kind of definition i've used -- that doesn't mean that some government in turkey at some point might think that their interests align with a different ideology, but i don't see how that works in the favor of aqis which is committed to the process and security on its borders, specifically where al qaeda is destabilizing everything in a way that is not the national interests of turkey or the party. so i actually don't think it's in the interest of the party to

do business with al qaeda. >> well, i would say that historically insun generalses have been able to -- incentury generalses are able to sustain themselves when they can use borders. syria is a border that is up controlled with iraq and one that is unevenly rolled if the turkey. the movement of foreign fighter is well recognized and the traffic is going through turkey. it's greater intervention, greater cooperation, and helping could to really close off that conduit, which has become critical to sustaining not just the groups in syria that we like, more moderate and secular groups-but also al qaeda to be more discriminate no who is getting aid. >> former student.

my question is, if this jihadist world view is this potent ideology or organization that is able to move throughout the world to ungoverned states which weak institutions, what -- it's almost like a virus spreading. what is the right mixture of preventive medicine from the united states' point of view to manage this, through partner forces, foreign internal defense, what have you? what does that look like, especially in an arab restricted budget. >> a nye way of sneaking in, what is the strategy against al qaeda in five minutes question. i'll let the panel take a swing at and it make whatever final comments they want to because that's a broad enough question. why don't we start with bruce. >> mary lays out the strategy

quite effectively. it's recognizing that al qaeda itself is a strategic animal and can only best be countered by having our own strategy, and it's a strategy that, as we have said ad nauseam for the past 13 years, can't only rely on kip nettics. has to be broader, has to address fundamentally achieving a recalibration, at least in an environment so that it doesn't create successive waves of terrorism, and that's -- discomforting for many people what counter-incentury generals si is all about. >> i think you're going to find the panel largely in accordance with what the broad prescription for a strategy would be. kinetic action is not actually the most pressing issue we face in fighting al qaeda. it's certain lay component of the strategy. i personally believe we need to

underscore mary's conclusion, which is fight the entire al qaeda network has a whole. we have been playing this game of whack-a-mole for 13 years and we'll continue to play it if we only go after those two stick their head up. instead there's a body underneath and that's what has drivens' supported the al qaeda network at large. and that doesn't mean putting american boots on the ground in every territory where al qaeda has a face, but it does mean recognizing al qaeda where it is and developing a strategy and dissecrete policies that undermine the group where it is operating, whether it's addressing legitimate antigovernment grievances or building up local security forces that can hold and control the territory that is sovereign to the state. that's what we're looking at as a strategy and not going piecemeal after a network that has evolved and adapted over the

years. >> i actually don't have much to add to what my colleagues have to say. you can read very broad sorts of things i have to say about the strategy in the paper itself. i think that we do need to have a global strategy that we have to be relying on something other than just attrition, and killing or capturing a set group of people as the way forward, and we have to take into consideration political and governance issues to deal with this problem. >> so, that leaves time we can sneak? one last question. right over here. >> i am donna. i was a student of professor

habeck. in 2012 campaign, president obama stated that leadership in pakistan, al qaeda leadership, was effectively decimated. this was in contrast to intelligence out of pakistan itself there was concerns in our intelligence community of a re-emergence that had gone away after going into the pakistan in 2001. and according to one of our top security experts, the group isn't diminished by drone attacks, which it what misterman is calling the whack-a-mole thing of that's actually adding to the antiamericannism that takes up space from the much needed discussion in pakistan on who the enemy of the state really is. >> i need you to get to a question really quick. >> it's basically, what are your thoughts on the nightmare scenario of al qaeda working with -- that has successfully carried out attacks in all four

provinces, something other groups have not been able to do in pakistan, and the group which general john allen says does exist in afghanistan. how do you feel that might very well be something that we have to grapple with post-2014? thank you. >> this gives me a chance to talk about my next book in 2015, called "attacking america: al qaeda's grand strategy." chapter five deals with the issue of unifying the ranks which is what al qaeda calls croppation of groups to get everyone on the same page ideologically and organizationally. they're very busy in pakistan. groups started off with completely different interests, leadership that might have been opposed to the objectives and ideology of al qaeda, they're very interested in coopting them

into their ranks and working with them in a pragmatic way to put them on the right page, as they put it, and aimed in the right direction. that's what i see happening in pakistan. >> thank you all very much for coming and please join me in thanking our panel. [applause] >> we'll bring you not event from the american enterprise institute tomorrow when they host a day of discussions on the affordable care act. panelists look at howl the law works in practice and its impact on the states, employers, the healthcare industry and consumers. live coverage begins at 9:15 a.m. eastern time here on c-span2. >> c-span2 providing live coverage of the u.s. senate floor proceed examination key public policy events, and every

weekend, booktv. now for 15 years, the only television network devoted to nonfiction books and authors. c-span2, created by the cable tv industry and brought to you as a public service by your local cable or satellite provider. next on a special week-night edition of booktv, books about the civil rights movement. first, panel at the anomalies book festival, including todd purdum. and then james meredith, and later, taylor branch talks about his book, the king years. at this year's annapolis book festivals authors discuss the civil rights movement. we hear from todd purdum, juan

williams, and david chappell, author of, waking from the dream. this is just under an hour. >> thank you all for coming to our panel on the civil rights movement. i'm bob mccarthy, the chair of humanities department. i ask you to silence your devices. i want to start by acknowledging yesterday was the 46th 46th anniversary of the assassination of martin luther king, jr., if we could take a brief moment of silence in his honor. >> thank you. we have an interesting array of books represented here. they cover a chronology of the civil rights movement. so i guess i'll introduce them

in sort of the order of the periods they cover. juan williams, "eyes on the prize" covers the civil rights movement from 1954 to 1965. juan williams has been a contributor fox news channel since 1997. also worked for npr and the "washington post" and contributed to a ride waning of media. the 25th anniversary of "eyes on the the prize. " he has written seven other books on civil rights, the african-american experience and the american media. he was won a number of awards for his investigative journalism. todd purdham "an idea whose time has come" takes a close look at the political battled involved in passing the civil rights act in 1964 and is regarded as one of the great e achievement of

the movement. he is now the national editor for "vanity fair" and a senior writer at political. and david chappell's wow making from the dream toy toy --" tracks the dream since the death of dr. king. he has taught in arkansas, russia, and upstate new york. he spent time in wbc in london, doing free-lance writing and policy work in addition to waking from the dream his books included, inside agitators, white southerners, and and stone of hope. the death of jim crow. and has written numerous articles andes says. our format, i'll start by asking a few questions for the panelists to discuss and then we'll switch to audience questions, if you have questions, go to the microphone in the middle.

then at 3:15 we'll move across for the book signing at the activity building. so all of the panelists could address this question -- we'll start with juan. in "eyes on the prize" quan quotes charles houston, an earlysive rights lawyer, saying lawsuits mean little unless supported by public opinion and the baffling problem is how to create the proper kind of public opinion. so i'm wondering what the goal l the goal of the movement was to shape public opinion or -- >> i think they're tied together in a very critical way. it's a predicate for legislative change that you have social change, that you have public opinion shift in your favor, and in the case, i would guess -- i can think of two wonderful examples of this. one i think everyone here would be familiar with is the letter

from the birmingham jail by dr. king, which is not only written for "the new york times." it appears as an op-ed in "the new york times," but also distributed as a pamphlet by christian groups, civil rights groups, with the intent of changing public perception about the urgency or the need of civil rights protests and civil rights revolution in the country. the argument had been that, gosh, these people are agitators, impatient. they don't understand that -- how difficult it is to change this culture. why do they foment these confrontations that lead to violence? here with king, in much the way of any pamphleteer, throughout all history, sort of failing his letter to the church door. and appealing for a shift in the way that americans thought about

race, and it would prove highly effective. he second example i would cite for you quickly, comes from experience i recently had. it's in "eyes on the prize" but i just went through the experience recently where a group of congressmen and women went down south, this being 50 years -- i guess next year is 50 years after the freedom rides and all that. and -- i'm sorry, after freedom summer. and we went first to mississippi, and one of the places we went to visit was the home of fannie lou hammer, and she might not be known to most of you, but fannie lou was one of the leaders of the mississippi freedom democratic party, and what they were trying to do was dislodge the

segregationists, all-white, mississippi democratic party from their seats at the 1964 atlantic city convention, being held by the democrats to nominate lbj. and in the course of this, one of the critical moments was when she testified before the credentials committee, and this was on national tv. and you had this woman, without much education, really, a generation removed from slavery, testifying about being beaten by people who simply didn't want her to register to vote. and asking, what kind of democratic party is this? what kind of country is this? is this america? it was so powerful that the president of the united states decided it was going to upset his chances for a peaceful nomination, and he immediately called a press conference at the white house to get the networks

to shift their coverage away from fannie lou hammer and to him, and it was successful. but i cite it as evidence of the power of narrative, of presentation, as critical to shifting public opinion in advance of shifting at the legislative agenda. >> well, i think everybody with a -- it's both. i think that every writer, every scholar working on it today, would emphasize some aspect of public opinion. i think the consensus, the orthodoxy, really, is that social change comes from the grassroots, from the bottom up, and legislation responds from the national state are a response to what brews at the grassroots level.

like most orthodoxies. most conventional wisdoms, that's an oversimplification. public opinion tended to mean then, northern white affluent opinion, the opinion of the "new york times," the opinion of the "washington post," the opinion of cbs news, et cetera. the conscience of the nation usually meant people in positions of power and influence. didn't mean opinion -- majority opinion in southern states, obviously. but it aspired to mean, at least, majority opinion, and congress was pressured. i think it's also the case, and many illustrations in the history of the civil rights movement in it's golden age, congruent with king's life, as well as later, and earlier, there's plenty of instances where a dedicated, prophetic

minority, stands up to take a stand and shifts public opinion. the most obvious example being something that juan's written about, the legal defense fund, thurgood marshall and other brilliant visionary legal strategists who steered the supreme court into a really radical change before i think public opinion, especially in the south, was anywhere near prepared for it. martin luther king at one point said that we want hearts and minds to change. a broader, deeper conception of public opinion. that is ultimately what we're aiming for. but we'll take structural legal change today if that's what we can get, and we trust that hearts and minds will follow. he reversed the old orthodoxy equation of conservative social

scientists like williams graham somner who says you can't use the state to change deeply rooted traditions, cannot change folkways, and dr. king says that's wrong. if you change the state, change the law, people will follow and that's often the way they approached it. i think it's fair to say that's often the way they won. >> certainly that's true, and in the case of the 1964 civil rights act, whose job was to finish what the civil war had supposedly finished 100 years before, there are clear lie two elements in which public opinion played a huge role. one were the searing demonstrations in birminghamin' 1963 at the time that dr. king was sent to jail and wrote his famous letter and the police dogs and fire hosts knocked young people the ground, tore their clothes off and spread horrifying images around the

country and the world that appalled john kennedy in concern and caused him to propose the most comprehensive bill since reconstruction. and a huge bipartisan, biracial coalition came about involving the faith community. churches, synagogues, all around the country, and this was a lobbying effort that had never really been seen on anything like this scale before, and they groups made a particular -- led by the national council of churches and others, made a particular strategic decision to focus their efforts on the midwestern congressman and senators and those from the great plain states who didn't have large black or lib raul constituencies and for whom civil rights would not naturally be a political issue but had plenty of methodists and presbyterians and catholicses and jews who would be

susceptible to a moral appeal, and it was president kennedy's decision to frame it in as primarily a moral issue, as old as the scriptures and clear as the constitution, and the watch word was do unto others, and it was deeply founded in the golden rule and it was time for us to live up to our founding creed. >> i wonder if you could talk about the methods of the movement. what worked and what didn't work, and perhaps what lessons we would draw for today if people want to bring about social change. david? >> well, i think the most important matter that needs clearing up is nonviolence. it was often red called -- ridiculed and derided by people who thought of themselves more radical in the 1950s and '60s, as a passive hat in hand way of begging, supplicating for

favor from those who had power. i think he lesson that dr. king and ruston, fanny lou hamer, who juan mentioned earlier, and many others who risked their lives that for a minority group, 12-13 percent of the national population, nonviolence was a very practical choice, resort to arms, resort to armed struggle, the choice of former gandhians in contemporary south africa. nelson mandela embraced arms when there was a majority. king and others in their hearts and souls embraced nonviolence as they put it, as a way of life. but even that had a strategic

dimension. byron ruston in talking dr. king into getting rid of the gun he kept in his house, convinced him that you got be more rigorous about your nonviolence in order to keep the nonviolent fair-weather allies and activists in line. if they see you waver on nine violence discipline -- discipline was the issue -- then they will waver and discipline will break down and we'll lose. for a minority to leverage its way to power which was outgunned, outspent, outvoted in the southern states, they had to use classics, moral jujitsu, gandhi referred to is at using the strength of your adversaries against them. i it was coercive strategy, and

later on, militant people who still i think have a great deal of influence in academic understanding of what happened in those days, claimed that dr. king and some of his allies preached that if some crook or mass murderer broke into your house and threatened your family, that dr. king would have you just sit there passively and let it happen without your raising a hand. nothing could be further from the truth. dr. king never said anything like that. nonviolence was a political strategy, an economic strategy, of coercion for mobilizing masses of people in the streets, which had nothing to do with defense. it was sort of ironic that the black panther party and verbally embracing of -- rejection of nonviolence, verbally embracing violence, very rarely actually practicing it.

focused on this issue of defense. they were talking past each other because the strategy of the civil rights movement was aggressive. it was an offensive strategy, not a defensive strategy. wasn't about defending your home or your property. about staking a claim for new political and economic victories, for forcing concessions from a powerful majority against the will of that powerful majority. i think we have to understand that the context of the choice of nonviolent strategy. there were people who were moral purists about nonviolence, and they're very important and deserve a tremendous amount of respect because they were risking their lives for principle. but they never expected and they never said they expected that the majority of people in the movement, the troops, marching with them, for political victories, would have to embrace

that moral purity. they sold it to the masses as a political strategy because the alternatives would have been suicidal and they demonstrated time and time again it worked, distracted concessions, beginning with the montgomery boycott in 1955-'56. >> as juan said earlier the strategies of the movement were many-followed and played on top of each other. the naacp in it's legal defense fund undertook years of strategic legal campaign, bringing suit successively against various institutions they felt would be susceptible, first the law schools and then public schools, and trying to get the courts to back the change, whether or not the legislature was ready to do it but there were intense divisions in the movement. the naacp and roy wilkins were very skip tick cal of king king's street campaign and were bitter about his whole

organization. they felt it was usurping their role as the oldest civil rights movement in the done there, and it was a patient series of lawsuits by the naacp that bore fruit. and then with the legislation in 1964 it's the movement's ability to appeal across the aisle, certainly to republicans, and also across the racial divide to appeal to white people, to prick their conscience, to make them willingly surrender some of their power in the name of a greater moral good, and there were at that time heartening number of white politicians, particularly republican politicians, who were willing to take a political risk of their own and do that. and that, i think, is -- it wasn't just one prong or one

pinser, it was a broad and probably the reason it succeeded how it did was that there were multiple strategies in force and not just one approach. >> one. >> it's important to go -- to understand first of all you see from what dave and todd just told you, this important divide within the movement that you have. on one side the activists and the other side you have this legal strategy that was being pursued from the time of someone who was a player near annapolis, thurgood marshall, and you have him understanding that operating on the principle that if you can change the law, you can begin to change the society. at the same time you have activists like dr. king operating on the appeal to conscience, and in large part christian conscience, that if

you believe truly in god, then we're all god's children, and that it would require you to have a different view of people who are of a different race. and be more inclusive. i would add to that divide the idea that if you think about strategy, what comes to mind is that a supreme court justice hearing, thurgood marshall the lawyer, argue, said to him, if only the native americans had a thurgood marshall, we could make much more progress on their count. what you have seen subsequent and dave might know this better than i can tell you -- over the course of the years after '64 and '65, the civil rights act that todd described, that you see other groups, hispanic-americans, women, the

disabled, everybody pursuing basically that strategy of change through the courts, through judicial rulings, that say they have rights in this country. and that part of that line of strategy is also, getting back to our first question, to shift public opinion and to do so through activism, whether it's disabled people blocking the entry to a building or people complaining as we saw out with the chavez and the movie that is out now, working for the rights or migrant laborers-but doing so in line with the strategic -- the successful strategic effort that have been made by the naacp, as well as sclc and dr. king. >> may i just emphasize or

clarify something that todd said. in the montgomery boycott there were two victories there was this very important legal victory in washington, dc which coincided with the timing of the end of a long siege of grassroots activists led by dr. king and rosa parks and others in montgomery there was also a year struggle there where the bus company and the city government, the power structure, really felt defeated and demoralized and the bus company lost money and a whole host of local changes took place. it is a nice coincidence where you can't neatly isolate the strategy that led to the victory, but i think we would agree that both of them are really important simultaneously working there. >> there was famous exchange between roy wilkins and martin luther king around the time of 1963, wren wilkins said to him i'd like to know, martin, just

what you ever desegue agree gaited in your life, and dr. king said i guess maybe nothing more than a few human heart, and turns out one human heart was john f. john f. kenned that made all the difference. >> and john kennedy taking the stance to define on national tvsive rights as a moral -- civil rights as a moral issue, i can't remember the words, we're not going to do it just because it's good strategy but because it's right. that night they shot medgar efforts in the back thaws the -- medgar evers in the back because the whole issue changed. when it became a moral issue for the president of the united states, who was dragged kicking and screaming into civil rights, it's like slavery becoming a moral issue. not just an issue of policy. but they recognized that this really ultimately meant war. >> what todd just said reminded me that early on, thurgood

marshall had no sense of what who dr. king was. he thought, who is this preacher down south, making this noise? and as late as the 1960s, naacp is worried about him and lacks collection of money -- lax collection of money, taking money out of their coffers but the thurgood marshall is of the opinion that dr. king is a wonderful speaker. he can change hearts and you walk away from his speech and you so enthused but you go back to segregated schools and neighborhoods and racial inequality on the work sites. and that the only place that you macon crete change is of you macon crete change is if you change the law, both in the congress and the courts. >> all three of your books

address lesser known figures in the movement. if you could choose a story you think people should know more about. >> i'll take one and then i'll leave the baltimore end for you. the one unsung hero i would single out is a conservative republican congressman from west central ohio named william mccullough. he was the ranking republican member on the house judiciary committee, a rock-ridge conservative. against foreign aid and education and his home town is now represented by speaker john boehner but he was a passionate believer in civil rights and had been appalled in 1957 and 1960 that lyndon johnson, as senate majority leader, watered down the civil rights bills in those yearses. so when president kennedy proposed a bill, mccullough made a deal with the administration

elm he said if you promise not to water this down in the senate and trade it away, you promise to give the republicans equal credit going into next year's election and diffuse it as a political issue, i will back you and bring the republican caucus along, and the respect in the house for him was such that the entire republican leadership would follow hem and that's what happened and because of mccullough's insistence on the strategy, first the kennedy administration and then the johnson administration, was forced to do something that had never before succeeded, which was to break afilibuster over civil rights in the senate and that. , too on june 10, 196 4 , is what happened. and this -- when she learned he was retiring in 1971, after he had a bad fall, jacqueline kennedy onassis wrote him a three-page letter and told him she knew that he more than in eye single person in congress was personally responsible for the bills and in the last weeks of her husband's life he had

taken consolation that mccullough could have easily betrayed his pledge and sabotaged the but he had not. and she said, please forgive the emotional tone of the letter but i want you to know what you mean to meet. and last night we had a function and his daughter came, and it was great to see her and it's a remarkable story that deserves to be remembered. >> not only does it deserve to be remembered, i think it's -- could have some hastening effect on the current incumbents of capitol hill about showing personal courage -- instead of saying, gosh, i might face a primary challenge from someone who is more conservative than i am. >> well, i've got quite a bit in my book about coretta king, but aisle going to yield to the temptation to talk about another

obscure conservative republican from rural ohio, who also figures prominently in my story. i would say he did his best to redeem the ohio republican caucus from the wayward or treasonous steps of mccutcheon. his name was john ashbrook, a member of the john birch society and he was pretty obscure. made quite a career out of hating martin luther king and heaping scorn upon him. he was present -- i think he was elected to congress in the early '60s and was always filing lengthy reports based on innuendo and can character assassination and guilt by association, all the mccarthy

mccarthy-ite tactics, and he had his hearing, not only before dr. king was shot but interestingly, after dr. king was shot, he was all over the pains of the congressional record, saying bad things about king. interesting stuff. the most king opponents, not all of whom were republicans and not all of whom were conservatives, really kept their mouths shut on the floor of congress and elsewhere with some interesting exceptions. but ashbrook continued to go after king, and he stayed in congress until 1982. that is to say through most of the debate on the martin luther king holiday legislation, the national holiday that was finally enacted after a four-year struggle, led by coretta king, with some help here and there from stevie

wonder and a whole host of, whichs who are traced in my -- host of characters who are in the story. but ashbrook kept bobbing up and dishing out this old conspiratorial, king consorted with communists stuff, denouncing king as a figure worthy of elevating to position of a national hero, recognizing on the level of a full guaranteed day off as official federal policy to elevate this man to the level of george washington and christopher columbus and jesus of nazareth-was horrifying to this guy and he tried to convince his colleagues in congress. there will only two people who opposed the king holiday and took that strategy of opposing king's character. things changed so much by the late '70s and '80s, larry

mcdonald from suburban atlanta, georgia, a democrat, and also a member of the john birch society, who continued to denounce king as a communist, et cetera, and then finally there was jesse helms, who actually a senator from north carolina who stayed out of the king holiday battle, at least on the floor of congress, until the very end when he stole the headlines by squaring off against ted kennedy and saying that the only reason we know king was a communist is because ted kennedy's brothers ordered the surveillance on him because that's what they believed, and he ended up getting a tobacco deal and backing down, which people suggested was his motive all along. but ashbrook is interesting because the official position of most republicans in congress initially was against the king holiday, and it was emphatically the position of ronald reagan, who was elected president in 1980. remember, the republicans took control of the senate in 1980

also, but what happened was you have republicans brought over to the pro-king holiday side and ultimately even ronald reagan, who had sort of nudged and winked he agreed with this sort of anticommunist line that ashbrook and others hat taken, without being explicit about it. don't get my wrong. but the republicans were pulled around most live by moderates in the party, like bob dole, howard baker of tennessee, pulled reagan and the republicans around to pretty strong support, and all along, the republicans and others who opposed the king holiday, mostly did so on really -- on the basis of really boring reasons that did not make good copy. it would be expensive to give the whole nation's work force another day off. they calculated that would be quite costly. ill advised in an economic

crisis. they said, not enough time had passed for the nation to get enough distance, and you had on conservatives like strom thurmond who voted for the holiday, surprisingly, saying dr. king's work wasn't finished and the existence of the martin luther king center for nonviolent social change established by coretta king, proves there is not enough history passed for getting the proper distance to decide if this is a person we want to single out more than lincoln, more than george washington car very, more than jack kennedy, et cetera, and it was because mcdonald and ashbrook from ohio, and then fortunately helms, took the position that they did. they made it untenable for

people to oppose the holiday. you just didn't get quoted in the paper if you talked about costs and the importance of passage of time for judging historical significance. what got into the headlines was coretta king and stevie wonders and others gladly quoted and emphasized and re-emphasized was this paranoid, unseemly, unsportsmanlike, guilt by association, squaring off ted kennedy versus jesse helms and you saw the people, even conservative runs, just would not be associated with that unseemly mr. cack the-ite line and came over to support the holiday. that's really why we have and it it's a preproduction of the same tactic which i think isn't merely about hearts and minds. it's about dividing public opinion of your enemies and isolating the ugliess-the-bull connors

connors and the sheriff clarks in the case of the 1960s, and putting people like jesse helms and larry mcdonald and john ashbrook into the spotlight as though they represent what that side really thinks, that made it untenable for moderates and people who just wanted to maintain their reputations for respectability, to stay on that side, and that's why we have a king holiday. >> i think i want to share this person with todd, which is clarence mitchell. we a have baltimore roots and part of the mitchell family and everything from the the afro american and civil rights movement tried into that history, including here in annapolis. but i would say one of the joys of doing -- being a writer is covering people who you think have made a difference, who have

demonstrated the capacity to create change to make something out of nothing in terms of gospel poetry. and there's so many of them in "eyes on the prize." right from the start -- in fact earlier today we were discussing charles hamilton houston, who was the dean of howard university recall, first made howard from a knight school, a part-time, not very good law school that was turning out inadequately prepared lawyers to a school that saw the idea of black lawyers as essential to creating equality, to gaining equal rights in the country, and so he went about that, and one of the young people he trained was thurgood marshall. so that's somebody that -- lots of folks don't know about charles hamilton houston. he is in both "eyes on the prize" and my biography of

justice marshall. so he is a hero to me. he's someone who created change over time, change that is still with us to this day. just an amazing man. but there were other people. i mean, i just mentioned to you, freedom summer. this is the 50th anniversary and thinking about people like bob moses, who was down south, people like dave dennis. there's such an amazing range of people who participated in freedom summer, obviously, cheny, goodman, and shrener, who died. stories 0 people who would leave comfort and go into a battleground to try to create change. those are american heroes of the highest, highest calling. and again, i think sometimes we see them as people who are martyred but forget the courage

they displayed as living spirits, living inheritors of the american dream and i would add in people like -- again, we focus so easily on dr. king, but going back even to the montgomery bus boycott, we forget people who played arguably a larger role than dr. king. e.d. nixon, pullman carporter who had been active in terms of the local naacp in montgomery and there's e.d. nixon working with a woman named joanne robinson who was a prefer at alabama state to put in place the bus boycott that ultimately king leads. joanne robinson one of my favorites as a strong, capable mind. she had been involved with getting black and white women together in a woman's political council in montgomery, way in advance. she was the person who had helped rosa parks get to the

highlander school, the school that was educating minors and social activists around the country about steps you can take to create change in your community. people think often times that rosa parks as this seamstress who refused to sid in the back of the bus. joanne robinson, so key. another person that leaps out to my mind, just the star of "eyes on the prize" would be diane natch, who is a college student, as a freshman, hears about what is going on with the freedom rides and one of the buses has been bombed in alabama, left a burning husk, and she decided, you know what? i can get a car from somewhere. we're going to drive up there and we're going to get on those buses. and then when she gets up there, you know, it's just unbelievable.

has the gall to say, oh, no, we need protection and we can't get it from the state police so she calls washington, and is able to get people at the justice department and embarrass them into putting pressure to get the national guard to get the alabama state national guard to protect those buss so they can complete their travels to louisiana and into the american history books. that's a college student. to me, again, inspiring beyond words, beyond what we can do as writers in the telling of at the tale. but if you if have a moment of doldrums or decision, it's so hard to create change, people like diane to me, people like bob, these are people who are just unbelievable heroes and heroines in my mind. and just great people. finally, many of you may know

the name emmett till. as a young person who was killed because he said, bye, baby, to a white woman in mississippi, and the woman -- she was 19 years old and her husband and his brother come back in the middle of the night, drag him out of basically a share cropper shack, beat him, try to get him to admit that he has been rude to a white woman, and he is saying, i go to school with white people in chicago. and they said you don't understand where you are and you are to apologize, never to speak to a white woman in this way. and they drag him down to the river and beat him and finally tie mechanical device, a cotton gin to his leg, and throw him into the river after shooting him in the head.

so, this kind of crime comes attention only because his body bobs to the top of the river and people see it and it's dragged in. then the question is, will anyone be punished for the crime? and it's only because of this old man, mose wright, that two people are charged with the murder, and then in an incredible act of courage, mose wright gets on the stand and famously points to the men who took the boy away that night and in specific to one of the men and says, they're he. and mose wright had to be held in seclusion and protection and then taken out of state immediately. you understand the threat to his life was uncredible. but he nonetheless acted in a way that we had never seen a black man act in the state of mississippi before.

willing to stand in court and identify a white man as the murderer of this black child. and the court -- the jury came back and found the men not guilty, but that act of courage is one, again, i think few people know about. they know about emmett till maybe as the kid who got lynched but don't know about the act of courage i think is the light, the grace that comes from the awful story. >> thank you. i think we have time for just maybe one or two questions from the audience. if you have a question. >> just i agree totally with what you were saying, i just finished reading a book by hall raines, a compilation of oral histories of the period. which really speaks a lot of the grassroots and not just at the top of the pyramid. but if you could maybe elaborate even more on not just the people

you talked about but the sharecroppers, the people in the cities who are actually on the front lines, the ones in birmingham who got hit by the party and so on, -- by the water and so on, people whose lives and livelihood they were willing to put on the line, and psychologically what that did by taking part in things, psychologically freed people they weren't slaves anymore. >> todd, i want to come back using your question to clarence mitchell. who is featured in your book. but again, these are people -- clarence mitchell is a little higher than what you're talking about and what was in hal raines book. i did a back called by money soul looks back and wonders." i looked at people who demonstrated in the most ordinary ways extraordinary moments of courage. and when you were speaking is was thinking to myself about

folks like going back to birmingham, thinking about the children. dr. king gets children to march with him. we have seen the famous pictures of the fire hoses and the dogs you referred to in the question. but it's also the case you see the teachers, the black middle class, in birmingham, at in point so outraged by the behavior of bull connor, that they are willing to stand in line, knowing that he is going to abuse them. that's incredible. for them they also had the fear of being fired from their jobs. a story that both you in annapolis know took place here at some point. so they have to worry about providing for their family, protecting their children, and they put on their sunday best and they stand in line to be abused by that man. to me that's incredible. i just tell you, it's just --

the idea of sacrifice, you know, because you don't know especially if you're the father in that family, what are you going to do if they take away your mortgage, take away your job, how are you going to stand up and be a man? it's tough. >> maybe time for one more question. >> thank you. it's been a great panel. you talked a lot about the way the law and the courts worked in terms of enforcing the civil rights act, but i'm curious if there was ever any kind of truth and reconciliation effort here where people were actually prosecuted in a public way for the abuse, the murders, the tyrannies, and racism, and if not, why not? >> well, yes. there was a series of trials in the 1990s and the early 2000 be