rights? >> i am in favor of democracy everywhere and always, whether it is sensible to be very aggressive toward the chinese about their view of the matter, i don't know, particularly when you consider and in all the years britain ruled hong kong i don't remember as having a system of democracy their. we should have. when we knew we were handing it over to the chinese, we suddenly conceived a great patent for democracy which we had not hitherto i'm afraid shown. but i don't want to mince words. i want democracy in hong kong. i believe it is the right way forward. i think it will eventually come. i find amazing talking to friends in china, members of the chinese intelligentsia,

the appetite i find this mainly low, just cannot believe how little importance they seem to attach to it. young people in china who you would have thought would be in the vanguard of wanting this thing, i i find there is a cultural difference. i think it is inevitable, and it we will come, like all revolution, circumstances of economic distress. as as soon as the bourgeoisie feel the pinch they will want greater political relief, but it is not happening yet. >> no comments. [applauding] >> thank you. [applauding] [inaudible conversations]

>> every weekend book tv offers programming focused on nonfiction authors and books. keep watching from over here on teewun. watch any any of our past programs online. next on book tv afterwards. this week cheryl atkinson and her book stonewalled, my fight for truth against the forces of obstruction, intimidation, and harassment in obama's washington. and if the former cbs news investigative reporter presents her account of the opposition she says she encountered while trying to report on the administration's middle east

policies. the program is about an hour. >> welcome. my fight for truth against the forces of obstruction, intimidation, and harassment in obama's washington. why did you want to write this book? >> a couple of people approached me with this idea as it happens, i had been thinking a lot, i attended investigative reporting conferences, friends, local news reporters, and it seems as though their were some common themes that signal trouble. i thought it would be at least interesting if not insightful for people to read.

i think at the ground level there is a great deal of desire to turn a great original and investigative story. i would say, i noticed in the past couple of years may be less of a desire on the part of the gatekeepers and managers to take on those blowfish -- take on those tough issues. all of that i argue in the book has resulted in what i see as a narrowing slice of what they want to put on the news at night. very much the same, not because they are only ten stories going on on the whole planet, but i argue the similar decision-making processes are used at each of the networks to decide what should be in the news

and more importantly what doesn't. >> the decision-making progress has to do with reviewer and ratings. how does the viewer play into that? weather report. and so is it the viewer's fault, network executive? >> what i was doing, government watchdog and waste reporting has proven to be the only thing the public likes less about the news media. that's one thing they see as contributing something of value. the idea they did not want the stories signaled to me and my producer there is something other than just

viewer interest to playing. also, the hot button issues, the stories we knew were wildly popular. i was repeatedly told that i would take their stories to the website that they would dominate the website. i don't think these decisions were made exclusively or holy. there were other factors at play. >> a difference in your mind or what you have seen behind how print outlets approach investigative reports. >> there are similarities. my acquaintances and friends, and they describe

similar pressures and trends i have concluded that there is something happening culturally within the industry. but i think most reporters will tell you the stories are harder fought to get on television. many of them don't. people think a lot of effort goes into putting great stories on television and would be surprised to no how much effort goes into sometimes keeping them off. >> you talk a little bit about the early part of your career. talk about how you got the book, because that is a special breed of person. >> it begins with the beat reports. i always had that extra step of curiosity. i had i had another question or two.

if you pull on the thread you often find a more interesting story. i was an outgrowth. i fell into it. >> and you covered this book largely about what you have done. the controversies under bush's administration, clinton as well. >> and i would say contrast the reception that the bush era stories got and even the republican targeted stories got as recently as last year i won i won and investigated in the award for doing a story. the implied promise that they would not operate business as usual. yet we yet we cut them down in key largo with big-money donors. those stories, when when i do them, are well received.

no one calls me a liberal mouthpiece when i do those stories. no one accuses me of being a tool of nancy pelosi, but when in the same breath i do a story that is perceived to go after the other side, all the forces come out to claim i am therefore a conservative. the unintended bias, the fact that they can't see that first of all there is a record that shows we fairly evenly cover both political parties, but the idea that they have to put a label, digging deeply into the controversy something about how they feel inside. >> and you have been asked about that, this idea of whether you are angling for a role at fox news. you have been embraced by conservatives.

but this book has done very well. what is it like to be a conservative stark matthew will? >> i don't mind either way. it does not bother me. it me. it is not true that people say my reporting is conservative. if it if it makes them feel better, i don't mind at all. i would.out, i have been on cnn and msnbc and al jazeera , and only they ask if i am angling for a job at fox which is really a silly question. well, then, are you angling for a job on msnbc? and i think that reveals the inherent bias. if you do reporting that targets the administration you have to be a conservative. >> if you look back at when

obama was first running, you think there is a sort of liberal leaning strain. what do you think that has meant for the coverage over the last six years? >> i did not really say that. i did not detect over the course of most of my 20 years a big problem with that. i had have bosses that i knew to be liberal leaning. great bosses that were able to keep their personal opinion out of the story. the problem is when you have a few gatekeepers, gatekeepers, and we and that the last couple of years. i certainly i certainly was not the only one who thought this. they can't keep their ideologies out of the story decision,, and they can skew the whole look of a newscast

even when the ground level reporters and producers are trying hard to put original and good stories on television that are fair. >> rooting for the establishment or rooting for corporate interest. >> i i think so. i think that all i can tell you is i detected less of a desire than i had ever seen to go after powers that be no matter who they are. we offered stories that had nothing to do with politics, investigations that had to do with taxpayer issues, charities that were accused of wrongdoing, consumer fraud stories. they did not want any of them. at loggerheads with the broadcast that did not want to take on most anything that we offered unless it was a controversy that was kind of being covered by

everyone else. you know, the new york times has a story. can you imagine. the huffington post says this. i can't tell you how many times, not that they aren't very legitimate purports to look at, but every good reporter i know wants to do there own reporting. they can turn up stories as good as the ones in the new york times if not better. their their bosses her tongue and copier paper, and they hate that. >> obviously being paid. >> that's what i thought. added value. i wanted to bring added value to any story they assigned me to. i wanted to try to take on issues that others did not want to touch, orphan stories that for some reason were not getting the kind of attention that i thought they deserved. and that is what i brought

to the table. >> this book again is about the obama white house. what have your interactions been like? you really layout controversies and scandals that you cover. overall what has it been like? and administration and president that came in promising unprecedented transparency. >> after clinton i think we all said, you know, hopefully there we will be a change when bush comes in and things will be better and more transparent. and if anything things probably got a little worse. he specifically promised things will be better. he put out an edict that said freedom of information requests are to be answered hearing on the side of providing information. information. it has been very

disappointing wherever you stand politically. new york times, "washington post", washington correspondents cannot we all agree this is the most difficult administration for transparency and press issues. that is the foundation for what i'm about to say. i would just tell you, the pushback which has always existed, every administration has its own form, but it is particularly aggressive and perhaps aggressively directed at me. but it was a daily thing. twice a day meetings. it surprised a lot of people in the public. they will e-mail me, call

their boss, get their surrogates involved, do social media campaigns. before you no it, there is a movement movement trying to controversial eyes any story they don't like, the reporters who are covering it, the whistleblowers who are telling the truth. they are now marginalized and discredited, and discredited, and it is just a very aggressive campaign, more so than what i experienced under the other administrations. >> as you laid out, clinton came in,, bush did, too. obama. and the fact that their isn't obviously sets up a pattern for whoever comes next. >> i think we are all in the same mindset. i would be interested to here what you think. every administration will be

tighter than the last. the federal bureaucracy seeks to get more powerful. they act they act like you are asking to see some sort of corporate proprietary secret and it is our job to provide the tension that does not let that get out of balance. here is our lawsuit because you did not answer. no, you can't keep us out of that public building, no, you don't no, you don't get to choose which reporters cover your stories. i don't think we have provided as good a balance as we should have. the more that we give up as the press the harder it is for us to get those rights back. those are hard-fought and once lost i i don't know how you go back and scoop them back. >> is the public on our side there have been letters, 2013, complaints about photo

sprays. in in the oval office. maybe they don't let reporters and. is it too in the means for the average joe to hold reporters in low regard. >> a lot of people pay no attention. i have heard that from people who consider themselves a political. people who consider themselves obama supporters. they overall do believe the press has a role to play in providing that natural tension. we are supposed to question authority. instead, the dynamic has been turned into question those in question authority. if a reporter reports something you don't like, discredit the reporter. instead, all instead, all the attention and skepticism is being turned on the wrong

side which is part of a a well orchestrated effort that has been somewhat successful. >> in this book you lay out a number of controversies and incidents that you cover, the first being fast and furious. several times in the book when you talk about you make the argument that perhaps reporters did not want to engage as much for whatever reason of the network to not talk about how you came to the fast and furious scandal, what it was, and what the reaction was from the white house and from cbs >> an anonymous letter sent to my producer, a copy of a letter actually that sen. grassley had sent to the department of justice asking whether this crazy sounding program was actually helping facilitate the delivery of rifles, assault rifles, and

other weapons into the hands of mexican drug cartels. i can tell that he had whistleblowers telling him this. of course, it piqued our interest. grassley would not return my calls back then. i was stuck with a letter and no context. we began getting online and finding sources and contacts. one thing led to another. we were able to talk to enough people that we believed it to be true. the first story had nobody on camera by name making allegations, but we had plenty of reliable off-camera sources. sources. after the first story, quite an important story. the executive producer at the time when the show with it, which is unusual. and let it go for a really long time, something like five minutes. >> two and a two and a half minutes. the story could never have been done that way. after that story there was

an incredible reaction, the pushback, as we call it, from the administration saying that all these people were liars, which we now no they were not, all my reporting was wrong, the kind of pushback that tells me i may be onto something. there were internal memos someone leaked with government officials emailing other public relations government officials saying they goodness no one else is picking up on the story. let's turn out some positive press which told me that we were onto something. we were on a roll for a little while. i finally got a very brave sitting atf agent to blow the whistle on camera by name. but after a couple of weeks when it looked like the story never lead to the attorney general or the white house, as it looked as though it was going higher

and as is the allegation set the department of justice had wiretaps on the case and knew about it and perhaps there was white house knowledge, interest in the story stopped, at least among the key people that would decide what to put on television. a story kept going. we. we kept digging up a lot of information. way more to be uncovered, but the interest fell off. that is a pattern i discover in a number of stories were initially they were welcomed and applauded and then a light switch goes off. >> is the light switch, in your estimation, does it have anything to do with, just an investigative report at some. and then at some.it becomes you have to realize, and there are these hearings.

hearings. at some.he is held in contempt. is that part of the reason? >> i would argue it does not become partisan because the atty. gen. attorney general is called in for hearing. how do you not consider contempt? why is it partisan automatically. i argue in the book it is spun as partisan. this is a deliberate campaign. there is a deliberate campaign in my opinion to spin these negative stories in a negative way. the reporter is controversialist. the whistleblower is controversialist. if you can discredit all of those things you don't have to answer the facts of the story which are so damaging. the president stepped in with executive privilege to

withhold documents. the story had its merits, but it was successfully controversialist including inside cbs by managers who had an issue they could not deal with properly on there own or had other reasons. i can tell,, my producer and i know when something is up. the trajectory of a story like that did not follow its natural trajectory that it should have dictated by facts along. >> you talk about in the book katie couric emailed you are called you up and asked you whether or not you had gotten an interview with eric holder. should key try. it does not happen. >> very excited about the story. they had cleared to additional stories.

yes. katie contacted me and asked, had i asked older for an interview. i said, yes, he wasn't going to do one. could she asked. terrific one was cut entirely. one was cut down drastically >> at some.their stories in the times, holder was exonerated, you.out. >> it took a long time, but the inspector general investigated another tactic. i am always watching for these things. this was not about, not about, can you prove the president of the united states knew it or eric holder personally knew everything. that that is kind of how the press treated.

the people who perpetuated this were operating under the obama administration on behalf of eric holder. it is still important. let's accept that at face value that he did not properly oversee agents that were running a cross-border international gunrunning organization for over a year that he just didn't notice her know about. fine, but it's still a huge story. >> and there was this sort of framing a fast and furious by folks in the liberal press.

oh, well, it really it really started under bush. that was something you heard >> and there is some truth to the idea. i learned fairly quickly on that an earlier operation called wide receiver had been tried and abandoned under bush because it was so controversial. the bush administration saw this as so potentially perilous because they did not want to bring these cases to trial. >> and it was a smaller operation. >> they're one of the same officials was working under the phoenix office. when pres. obama came into office they were looking for gun cases to bring and pick that one up.

in the process they learned the guns had been walk and this an appropriate fashion. so even though the justice department was telling congress it never happened, there they were internal memos that show they were talking about gun walking. so there was an element. i think what was interesting about that is i had a manager who was on my side and thought fast and furious should be getting more attention. whenever you try to pitch these stories mention the bush connection every time. that was the mentality. we knew that the people that were keeping it off the air would be happier and more anxious to go after the bush angle than they would be the obama angle. >> and another one of your reports looked at green energy. of course we no that as part of the stimulus package that obama passed, a lot of money went to green energy. plans to plans to retrofit

buildings and give money to green energy companies that made solar panels or had battery-operated cars. it became part of the 2012 2012 campaign, i remember, with romney pointing to a particular business that went belly up. solyndra was one of them. talk to me about this story, this investment in these green energy companies and what you found out. >> added not cover solyndra. when there is big story and it looks like it is pretty well covered, i don't worry, but if i, but if i find an angle that has not been widely covered i start digging. green energy, i can't i can't remember how i ran across it after solyndra other examples that seems to be wasteful spending in which we should have known in advance or did know in advance that the money was probably just going to go down the tubes.

and it was $90 billion in the stimulus. and more and more money had been given under bush prior to that. a lot of money had gone into these. i did not see any of these stories for or against green energy. everyone wants green energy to work. i saw this as a taxpayer funding issue and specialize in doing those stories. people appreciate and like those stories. i started digging around into reports of these companies that got a lot of tax dollars and was shocked at what they showed and what had not yet been widely reported. ..

with battery-operated cars and reallg to tout the success of the stimulus package and this indefinite in these cars and solar panels that were really going to change the economy and change our dependence on, you know, fuel and things like that. >> guest: that's right. and i argue, so i place something in the book, i call it substitution game -- >> host: yes. >> guest: -- i argue, and i do believe this, if you had had bush and cheney instead of obama and biden attending all of these groundbreaking ceremonies for

big corporate people who had gotten a lot of tax money that in some cases made political donations to them and later were found to be fairly quickly going belly up after getting taxpayer funding, i think you would have seen all over the news the clips of bush saying this factory's going to be full of, you know, a thousand workers making cars, and then you'd see the empty factory, and you would show the contrast. fair enough. but nobody was doing that with these really stark and obvious examples that happened under the obama administration. so i was digging into that because i thought it was a great story. but, um, i detail a lot of it in the book, the appetite really dried up fast. after them loving the story, all of a sudden there was no more. >> host: this question of what do you have against green energy comes up. >> guest: right. so, you know, we suspected -- my producer and i and a few others that were trying to help get these stories on television would think what is it they don't like about the story? they would never say your story's conservative, they would

just say there's no time, that's not interesting, so we would try to think what is it they don't like? and we concluded -- and i think it was proven rightfully so -- that one of the main gatekeepers, the executive producer at the time just thought the public would be soured on green energy if they thought their money was being wasted. and that seemed to be confirmed by a manager who overheard a conversation in new york. when one manager was trying to get pat -- this is how it was told to me -- the executive producer to run some of these stories that i was sending notes about because they were incredible stories. and the answer was, what's the matter, don't you support green energy? and that said it all to me. these were not stories about green energy. and you have to trust the public to make or allow the public to make up their own mind. you don't censor a story or a topic, this is my view, because you're afraid they might draw the wrong conclusion about something you care about. >> host: right.

>> guest: and i think that's what happened. >> host: were there instances, because you mentioned this with the gun-running story, well, if i put bush in there, maybe that'll make it more palatable to the network, could you figure that out with green energy? >> guest: well, when the person advised me to do that with fast and furious, i refused to do it. i said i have mentioned it sense then, i have done a whole piece on it, but i'm not going to unnaturally work it into a story -- >> host: because you felt like it was -- >> guest: i'm not going to contrive a story for the sake of getting it on. with green energy i can't think of a way they would have accepted it. in fact, one of the stories they turned down would have been perfect. actually, a producer found this story, and i won't tell the whole thing except to say unions -- so this is a story some democrats would like -- were upset because money had gone from the stimulus just for companies that were actually owned by koreans who had brought in korean workers, and i believe it was michigan, instead of

hiring the locals for some jobs that the locals say this is supposed to be helping stimulate our economy and hire our workers. so the local unions objected. they wrote a letter to their democratic congress people and to the president, you know, they were worried about this. we got undercover video of the korean nationals working in the factories. we had, i thought, a terrific story. they didn't want that. but i thought that was good from the sense it's not a democrat versus republican story, it's actually some democrats raising issues with other democrats, and i've done stories with republicans doing the same thing. sometimes those are the best kinds of stories because of that, but they didn't want that story either. >> host: you, of course, are no longer at cbs. what is their reaction? officially, it seems to be no comment. >> guest: right, no comment. all i've heard, other reporters have told me they're quietly just saying disparaging things about me, but i kind of expected that. i think a few key people are. i got quite a bit of support from people who know what i say

is true, and some of them are quoted in the book, and i got a really nice e-mail just this week from somebody i didn't know very well who said he thought it was good something positive was coming from the ugliness, as he called it. so i'm pretty pleased overall with the reaction. i thought it would be a bumpier ride than it's been. >> host: you know, another thing you cover in the book is benghazi. and this incident where two americans are killed, one of whom is an ambassador, ambassador stevens, and this is on september 11th, 2012, right in the middle of a presidential campaign. it becomes a topic of debates and really fights in some ways over wording, terrorism and terror, whether or not obama called it terrorism. talk to me about benghazi, your experiences there and also the role that cbs seemed to play in having this information about something that obama said and not going with it.

>> guest: yeah. four americans were killed, and again, that wasn't a story that i dove in on myself. but about three weeks in, cbs asked me to start dig canning around because they -- digging around because they sensed something more was there. a lot of reporters were covering it. so as a team we started digging, and my producer and i got a lot of important, i think, advances and gets on the story. it was clear almost immediately that the administration was hiding information, because they wouldn't answer straight, simple questions like when did the event end, when did the attack -- at the time we thought there was one, they weren't even saying there was two. there was just so many unanswered questions. and initially, like the other stories, cbs was very receptive and very pleased with several weeks of stories that we did that were digging deeply and starting to really get at the heart of, i think, getting some answers to questions. but every step i think it made the administration's response look worse. so as we were doing, i think, a better and better job and getting more sources -- again,

not republicans. i was using democratic sources inside the administration, i was using documents from the obama administration. it wasn't a phony republican scandal. these were in some cases lifelong democrats that were giving information because they thought something had gone drastically wrong. but, again, the light switch went off, you know, as this got to be more and more sensitive story and as the election got closer and as the pushback became stronger and the story was controversialized, oh, republican scandal and conservative reporting, they didn't want those stories even though i thought much more had to be done on that story. so i published a lot on the web. i didn't stop investigating. my producer and i published on the web and kept going. >> host: right. is the idea here that there's this presidential election going on, we don't want to put our thumb on the scale in in any wa? >> guest: you mean cbs? >> host: cbs, right. >> guest: i don't know what conversations they had. they never said anything like that to me.

they just thought the story was so well covered, what else was there left to say, you know? they never said things like that. maybe they had discussions among themselves like that, maybe they told themselves that. but on the other hand, they took other actions, i would argue, that did put their thumb on the scale, and you referred to one of them. we had, unbeknownst to me at the time when i was covering benghazi, we had a clip inside cbs from our "60 minutes" correspondent kroft -- steve kroft who had conducted an interview the next day with president obama in the rose garden. and we never aired this clip, but it became very relevant several weeks later n. the clip steve kroft said to the president something like, mr. president, today you've avoided using the word "terrorism" or "terrorist acts," and the president says, "right." steve says, well, why is that, and the president says it's too early to tell. put aside the fact already we

now know in documents that they did tell the libyans that terrorism's responsible, but at the time it wasn't so much a question of what wording was used. that was raised later. and you may remember in the debate with romney when romney said to the president you didn't even call this a terrorist attack, and the president said, well, yes, i did, and check the tape and so on. >> host: the rose garden ceremony, and candy crowley comes in and says, oh -- >> guest: the president's right. unbeknownst to me at the time, we had a tape that would have proved romney correct and the president wrong because he said he did avoid using the term. but we sat on that clip. again, i didn't know it existed until several weeks later when somebody leaked it out and talked about it right before the election. what's worse, not only did we not reveal that clip, i and another correspondent were directed by the new york managers to use a different part of the interview that we were provided in part with the context that we were told to use

that gave the opposite impression, that the president had actually said the opposite of what we now know he said. sort of a complicated story. but i thought we had been a party to directing a narrative in a specific direction intentionally giving the impression that something had happened that had not happened at all and sat on a clip that was directly relevant to the news, again, shooting our own selves in the foot because that's something we could have given value added to the viewer, directly vel rant to the campaign that for whatever reason we didn't use at the time. >> host: again, cbs hasn't commented on the book and what you say in the book, but in those moments what do you do? are you nervous about being a troublemaker? what are you, what's your sort of interaction with your bosses? >> guest: it's never a comfortable place to be, but clearly i'm not too worried about being labeled a troublemaker, because i continue doing these things.

but i wasn't alone. when we found out what the clip said, and it was the friday before the election, another reporter brought it to my attention, read it to me on the phone, and we both knew it had to be published. we both knew it should have been published already. and several of us -- not just me, but a couple of us -- got together and contacted our managers and worked with them, and they immediately agreed. nobody denied that we'd made a really big mistake. i argued that it was clearly intentional, and it was really bad, and nobody denied that. and we all just tried to figure out how to publish it quickly so that at least we could say even if it was belated, that we published it prior to the election. and we posted it, i believe, the sunday night before the election. >> host: yeah. in many ways maybe too little too late because a lot of this had already gone on, and whether or not -- >> guest: right. >> host: yeah. >> guest: but my main concern, cbs was my home and, you know, at some point for much of my career i thought i would work there the rest of my career, and i really did have cbs'

protection in mind. i'd been there, if questions were asked later, we would have to show as soon as this came to question, we'd have taken the proper actions to rectify it. it must be published quickly and before the election, because i thought if the president wins and it comes out afterwards, as surely it would because people were talking about it inside cbs, it would look as though we perhaps affected the outcome of the election or tried. but if we published it before, it would be harder to say that we, you know, had some sort of outcome on an important issue in the election. so we did get it published. i felt good that we did. yes, it was tense and awkward for us to be talking with our bosses about something like this and saying the things we said to them about it, but had to be done. >> host: and another big story, health care, and the launch of this web site which as we all remember didn't go well for the white house at all. what do you make of, first, talk about the general coverage of it, and then talk about your own

coverage. >> guest: i think the press was asleep at the switch. i include myself. i didn't look into healthcare.gov when it was being developed because when i finally did start looking into it -- and i was assigned to it like the other stories, three weeks in cbs said, please, start taking a look. when i started looking back, there were so many warning signals. there were congressional hearings, testimony evidence, security tests that didn't get conducted, there were things -- there was so many red flags, we didn't report them. we did mostly, i think, positive stories about -- and why do you think that happened? why is there a sort of blind spot? is there so much that's going on? it's too technical, it's a web site? how hard is it to build a web site? >> guest: why do you think? >> host: you know, i don't know. i think, again, we took the administration's word for it, right. >> guest: bingo. i argue in the book that there's this trend, and i don't understand it, that we often are taking whether it's a corporation or a government,

whatever administration, they issue something, and i think it used to be that most of us knew to say, okay, what they want us to report, let's verify it, let's rook for the fact -- look for the facts in the documents and make sure it's true. and i've started hearing the last couple of years at cbs more often than i ever had a manager or a colleague would say, well, the government says this, or let's see what the government says as if that was the final word, and that was to be the truth that we accepted. and i think by and large people wanted -- people want health care to work, people think health care should be changed in this country -- >> host: or there wasn't the sense that the broken part of it was going to be this web site, right? maybe it would mess up in terms of the different states and, you know, the expansion and those sorts of things -- >> guest: totally unexpected. >> host: yeah. >> guest: although, again, there were signs. there were signals when you look back in hindsight. maybe if we had been looking closer, but who knows? maybe we wouldn't have caught that. certainly, about three weeks in there was a recognition we

needed to do some stronger reporting. i think we all did. all the networks got on it, the newspapers did, i think there was some good reporting done, and then the light switch went off. so we've almost done -- i haven't carefully monitored the networks since, but after a certain point no matter how important i thought the stories were, we continued to dig up my producer and i, they didn't want them. and there were some, i think, very important stories. >> host: after the web site got fixed. >> guest: right. after the web site was fixed when, for example, it was considered a very big deal for a short time that something like four million people were losing their insurance. you remember that, you know, the whole controversy over if you like your insurance, you can keep it. >> host: right. >> guest: that was, rightfully so, a big deal. but when i went to them and said is, gosh, i found evidence with the help of people who support obamacare and insiders who pointed out to me that it was in the cbo's projections that something like 13 million -- not four -- 13 million more were

going to get bumped off their work insurance, i said, well, this is at least important because we're talking about more than three times the number you thought was important last week, and they suddenly were like let's wait until that happens. and i'm like, wait until it happens? my producer and i went off and discovered it was already happening. so the people were already losing their work insurance. we came back and said we have examples on the record, you know, it has happened. well, you know, no time for that in the program. i mean, it was really stunning to me that you could bring them really important issues. more people were paying attention, according to polls, for healthcare.gov during this time period than was it a typhoon that killed so many people internationally. more people were interested in healthcare.gov, and some nights we were not covering any developments once the light switch went off on this. >> host: and, i mean, cbs is different from fox news and msnbc because you've got 30 minutes every night, right? i guess you have the morning

show as well, but that's 30 minutes of tightly-edited, curated news. but still you're saying that -- >> guest: at the very night, and i have this example in my book, the same day a poll showed how many people were interested in healthcare.gov, a huge percentage of americans, the american public, we're putting on stories, largely the same stories that the three networks that had nothing to do -- not even mentioning important hearings with developments on healthcare.gov. both pro and con testimony. i'm not saying you have to skew the story one way or the other. they just weren't reporting on it at all at some point, even when it remained a major issue in the eyes of most americans. >> host: um, talk a bit about you begin the book with really in this kind of harrowing experience. i mean, harrowing might be putting too fine a point on it, but freaky, maybe, weird or creepy. >> guest: creepy. >> host: creepy, where you're having these odd occurrences

with your phone, you suspect that maybe you're being spied on, that someone's tapping your phones. the verizon folks, you seemed to have a lot of faith in verizon coming out to help you -- [laughter] >> guest: they can never fix anything. >> host: and they do come out, i think it's on new year's day. >> guest: yeah. >> host: talk about that. this is how you begin the book. >> guest: i want to point out in hindsight things look a little clearer. i certainly never thought i was being surveilled or monitored by the government. weird things were happening, yes, but i didn't think that was connected to a surveillance effort. the only reason i thought of it at all is because people came to me in the fall of 2012, people familiar with government practices, and said your benghazi reporting's pretty close to home, pretty good, keep it up, but you know you're probably being monitored because of it. monitored? these aren't crazy people, decent sources, so i was, like, what do you mean? and over time one of them in

this time period was able, someone was able to connect me to a forensics expert -- has to be the right kind, i'm told. any old to expert can't find these highly sophisticated -- >> host: right. >> guest: but he was able to identify a long-term monitoring and surveillance that had gone on in my cbs laptop computer that included key stroke monitoring, activation of my skype, they had all my passwords, they were in the cbs system -- >> host: and at some point the computer turns on by itself. >> guest: in retrospect the experts think this may be why during the nighttime, yes, my computers were turning on, people were warning me maybe you're being surveilled. i thought it was a normal thing but, again, one of my experts said, no, what you're describing once we talked about is not the normal updates and handshakes that computers do. this is something different. so one thing led to another and, ultimately, i had three separate computer forensics exams, each

of which cop firmed not just -- confirmed not just in my cbs laptop, but in my home apple desktop unit a highly sophisticated intrusion effort that was going on for quite some time. >> host: some critics have said, well, she hasn't been fully open about this, she hasn't, you know, essentially released a report with names on it that say this is what happened. and these are my experts, and this is what they say. is that something you feel like that's a fair criticism? >> guest: well, there is some of that. i have some of the information in the book which we're comfortable with releasing and the name of my expert but, no, of course, while the investigation's going on, there won't be reports released. i'm following my attorney's advice. but i'm really not doing this to prove to the critics who will never be convinced of anything even if they see someone signed a confession. i'm pursuing this, you know, people can believe it or not if they want to, it doesn't matter to me. i'm just telling you my observations and experiences. and on a separate level i want to be sure that who did this does not simply skulk off into

the night unnoticed. they now know that i know, i know what they did, you know? whoever the "they" is, and i want to expose it. again, if people want to disregard it, they're free to. i just simply tell what i know and what i think and what the forensics said as much as i can in the book, and you're free to believe it or just say none of it ever happened. >> host: this is part of a larger story that a lot of us have been having about government surveillance of everyone, right? but also part of a sliver of that is the white house's interaction with journalists and investigating leaks. talk about that a bit, because this is a part of the book as well, last chapters. >> guest: well, again, for those who think how crazy to think the government could be in your computer, i might mention one of the first computer forensics exam concluded it was software that's proprietary to a government agency. so that's what raised that specter specifically. but for anyone who thinks it's

silly, i say you haven't been paying attention to the news. because now we have the context we didn't have during my initial incident. since then we know, as you know, that the government has overreached, in my opinion, pretty far in its handling of the press. the government itself has acknowledged it's perhaps overreached in surveillance of private citizens just as my sources had said to me when they originally came to me. i think it's a very serious matter when you have people worried about making phone calls and communicating on e-mail because they assume they're being watched. let me ask you this, if you don't mind. do kind of assume that your -- do you kind of assume that your communications could be monitored, whether it's the phone or the computer? >> host: i do. you know, if it's the government, if it's my bosses at work, yeah, i think that's kind of the expectation. >> guest: the idea that now the government just kind of does, i will tell you, i have conversations with members of congress who will tell me on the phone they don't want to say

certain things because they assume the phone calls are being monitored. we know the government has acknowledged, um, looking at phone records of members of congress and their staff in the intelligence committee, i believe it was. so where does it end if everybody starts being afraid? it almost reminds me of russia. if everyone's afraid of everything they say is something that could be monitored or used against them or found out about, it just changes the whole tone of the way you do business and how you think and what you can report. >> host: that sort of trend coming just as people seem freer than ever to post all kinds of things online, on facebook and twitter and be very open about their private lives. >> guest: right. i think that's one reason why a lot of people have told me -- this has been revealed -- they're not so worried. and i say that in the book, that people have said i have no secrets, i haven't broken any law, i don't care if the government looks at me, and i think, well, it doesn't matter whether you've done anything wrong. you may trust today's government, do you know who's going to be in charge tomorrow? do you trust that nobody outside the government that you trust

will have access to your information? do you trust that even though you've done nothing wrong, that there couldn't be possibly someone that would try to make an effort to make it look as though you've done something wrong? i think it's, again, you know, the culture today where people do give up so much of their privacy, maybe they're not as worried about it. i do think journalists are concerned. >> host: where do you think journalists should be looking now? i mean, you're an investigative journalist. maybe you're going to give away too many of your secrets about what you're looking at. but are there stories out there that you feel the press is ignoring? >> guest: i think, um, press certainly isn't ignoring terrorism, but i think there's a lot more to be reported and uncovered about the steady march of terrorism which i think our counterterrorism experts think is coming here in a formal way. europe next and then us. i mean, that's what i was told. i think the immigration story has been well covered, some aspects of it but not others. >> host: you think the press, certainly the political press might cover the politics of it

more than the nitty-gritty -- >> guest: absolutely. and i think, i think it's been well covered, the positive aspects of the contributions that illegal immigrants have made to the country and the good part about them being here, the people who have come here and become good citizens and made contributions and served in wartime. the unfair things that have happened to them. i think those have been well covered. i don't think it's been as well covered the perils that come with that. it's almost as if we don't really want to say it could be a bad thing or that there could be bad repercussions when everybody knows there could be, and they're dealing with it because i've been on the border to do these stories in these border towns. and to cbs' credit, we did do a big, long cover story that had to do with some of these issues for sunday morning, but i think that's an important issue that deserves more coverage. and i would say in general medical stories. a huge variety that i think we have not well covered in my opinion, partly because the pharmaceutical industry buys so much advertising in the media

and has so much, i believe, influence. there's a story in the book about the sales department calling in the executive producer who i once worked for and commenting on stories that he was having me do about a cholesterol-lowering staten drugs and how that could harm business. because of that, i think we haven't covered a lot of pharmaceutical issues we should be covering, and i think those could be important. >> host: and advice for young journalists. you've been in this business for a number of years. it's changing all around us day by day, it feels like. any advice for young folks? >> guest: it's tough. if you don't do what the bosses want when they want you to do something that you think is not quite right, will you ever get the next job? >> host: right. >> guest: it's hard to say what to tell somebody to do. but i think there's room for people to follow a story in a -- to a place where it's going. don't lead it, follow it. try to resist the temptation to let others take you into a place where you can tell where they would like it to go and make your point, and make your

argument for this is where the story really goes. and i think there's a lot of outlets. as pessimistic as some of this may sound, i don't think we're ever going back to the world where most people got their news from three stations and two newspapers -- >> host: right. >> guest: but i do think something will be born of it. it's got to work itself out so people can separate, but there's plenty of good reporting in places like "front line" and hbo "vice" and propublica and project censored and center for public integrity. you just have to find it, and i think people will find new ways to find the truth about the issues they care about. it's just not going to be the same way they did before. >> host: and what's next for you? >> guest: i think i'm just going to keep plugging along in the short term as i have since march. i've published a lot of what i call orphan stories like the story on a federal study on premature babies in which these women say they had no idea in some cases they were even in a

study, and the government's own ethics body found the consent form was unethical. and as a result some of the babies in the study died and were blinded. >> host: wow. and where can we find your work? >> guest: sheryl attkisson.com, i try to cross reference anything i publish, whoever it's for, i try to -- or sinclair media television, i try to cross reference on sharyl attkisson.com. >> host: thank you so much for chatting today. i learned a lot. i hope, you know, young journalists read this and your sort of dogged spirit in terms of investigating, and good luck to you. >> guest: thank you. >> that was "after words," booktv's signature program in which authors of the latest nonfiction books are interviewed by journalists, public policymakers and others familiar with their material. "after words" airs every weekend on booktv at 10 p.m. on saturday, 12 and 9 p.m. on

sunday and 12 a.m. on monday. and you can also watch "after words" online. go to booktv.org and click on "after words" in the booktv series and topics list on the upper right side of the page. >> next, dan fagin sat down with booktv to discuss his prisoner prize-winning book "toms river," about a small town in new jersey. this interview was conducted in new york city. it's part of booktv's college series. this is about half an hour. >> host: "toms river" is the name of the book, winner of the pulitzer prize for general nonfiction last year. nyu professor dan fagin is the author. professor fagin, what is toms river?