the soviets tried to erase the polish and jewish history of the city and now if you go there are the people there have no idea that it was a polish city. particularly the soviets who raised soviet history and they accused him of being a nazi collaborator witch and the sense he was all the while committing sabotage and in fact he was

recognized by a native israel many years after his death as a hero. he was really a good human being operating in circumstances that most of us can't even imagine. >> thank you very much for your time. appreciate it. >> thank you. >> host: welcome sharyl attkisson. it's sharyl attkisson. it's great to have you here today to talk about your book "stonewalled" in the subtitle here is my fight for truth

against the forces of obstruction, intimidation and harassment in obama's washington washington. why did you want to write this book? >> guest: a couple of people approach me with an idea which was something i would like to write about and as it happens i have been thinking for a long time about the state of journalism in things that were happening in the industry some of it because much of my experiences at cbs but some of it not at all because of cbs. i attended investigative reporting conferences and compared with local news reporters and it seemed as though there were some common themes that signaled trouble as far as i was concerned and i thought it would be interesting if not insightful for people to read some of the experiences and observations. >> host: what. >> host: what is trouble? at some point in the book you talk about the journalists themselves not wanting to deal with maybe the stress of taking on corporations and government. >> guest: i think at the ground level there still a great deal of desire on the part of

many reporters and producers to turn upgrade original and investigative stories. that's what we do. that is what every reporter likes to do and in the past couple of years and other reporters have observed a less on the desire of the gatekeepers and managers to take on the tough issues whether they are political issues or even topics that go after certain special interests that are protected for one reason or another or even corporate interests in some cases. so 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 that night and then you have as a result a homogenized newscast that on a given night is very much the same not because they're only 10 stories going on on the whole planet in a given night but i argue the similar decision-making processes are used at each of the network to decide what should be in the news and more importantly what doesn't get into the news. >> host: i imagine the

decision-making process that a network is making has to do with the viewer and the ratings. so how does the viewer play into back that? with a rather see authority? you talk about france is how cbs might -- i think you'd used the word weather. so is it that viewers bawled or the network network executives falls? >> guest: i think there's a combination. certainly the types of stories that i was doing for most of the 20 years i was encouraged to do government watchdog reporting has proven to the long-standing poll such as più the only thing the public likes less about the news media. that's one thing they see us as contributing something of value. so the idea that they didn't seem to want the stories at least not for me in the last couple of your signal to me and my producers that they were something other than just viewer interest at play. also when i discuss in the book

argues issues we were investigating data first certain network managers likely stories in the light switch would go off and they would want them. the stories we knew weren't wildly popular among the large chunk of yours and i was repeatedly told when i take the stories to the web site if they couldn't get on television that they would dominate the web site and attract all kinds of traffic. so i don't think these decisions were made exclusively or wholly in regards to what they thought viewers wanted to see. i think there were other factors at play. >> host: in your mind or what you have seen between what print outlets approach print and investigative reports versus what networks to? >> guest: i think there are similarities. i can't say i know a lot about the print world but i have compared notes with some of my colleagues at investigative reporter conferences and acquaintances and friends and they describe similar pressures and similar trends. i concluded that there is

something happening culturally within the industry. it doesn't mean there is no investigative reporting and there's no individual reporting but i think most reporters will tell you the stories are harder far to get on television that many of them don't. one line that i use in the book is that people think take a lot of effort into printing great stories on television and they be surprised how much effort goes into keeping some of them off. i think that's a story i'm trying to tell. >> host: and you talk a little bit about the earlier part of your career. talk about how you got the book to do investigative journalism. it's a special breed of person and journalist, folks who want to do this kind of work. >> guest: i think it begins as everybody doing to beat reports but i always had as many reporters see that extra curiosity instead of leaving the story at the end of the day. i always have another question or two and if you pull on a thread you find a more interesting story and when that other people don't have.

so i was really never assigned to be an investigative reporter. it was just an outflow of the natural pouring that i did that isil and said. >> host: and you covered reports largely about what you have done under obama's tenure which were controversies under bush's administration as well. >> guest: i contrast the reception that the bush era stories god and even the republican targeted stories got as recently as last year. i want an investigative emmy award for doing a story that investigated a republican freshman fund-raising and their implied promise they would not operate business as usual in washington and yet we caught them in key largo with big-money donors with undercover cameras. those stories 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 or whoever i was being a tool of what i noticed when the same breath into a story that isn't perceived to go after the other side or the obama administration all the forces come out to claim that i'm therefore that i'm there for now conservative all of a sudden and i have a ideological thing. i think that to me reveals the unintended bias of those making the judgment of fast -- the fact that they can't see there's a record that shows i think fairly evenly covered both political parties and often no political party at all but the idea that they have to put a label on it and they think only would dig into the the administration shows something about how they feel inside. >> host: you have been asked about this idea of what you are angling for a role with "fox news" and you have been embraced by conservatives but also this book does really well on "the

new york times" bestsellers list. congratulations on that. what is it like now to be a conservative star if you will? >> guest: i don't mind either way. when i have been called several in the past that is help people to put that label on me. that's what they want to do it doesn't bother me. it's not true that people say my reporting is conservative but if it makes them feel better and that's what they want to do it doesn't matter to me. i don't mind at all. i would point out i've been on "cnn" and "msnbc" and c-span and al-jazeera and only to ask in my angling for a job at fox which is really a silly question. nobody asked as i denied as being a conservator reporter then are you angling for a job on "msnbc" and again that reveals the inherent bias when people asked the question that if you do reporting that targets this administration you have to be a conservative because who would do such a thing? >> host: as you look back at the past six years or when obama was first running what do you

think do you think there's some sort of liberal leaning strain among reporters and what has that meant for the coverage over the last six years? >> guest: i didn't really say that. i wouldn't argue the point that maybe that exist but i didn't detest over the course of most of my 20 years a big problem with that. i have bosses that i need to be liberal leaning and bosses that i knew to be considerate -- conservative leaning but able to keep their personal opinions out of the story judgment which is what journalists are taught to do. i think the problem is when you have a few gatekeepers and i think we have at the last couple of years with cbs news and i wasn't the only one who thought this. this was a topic of daily conversation, who can't keep their ideologies out of the story decision and they can view the whole look of a newscast even on a ground-level reporter and producer trying very hard to put originally good stories on

television. i think i was happening with cbs. >> host: so it's sort of rooting for the establishment or corporate interests. >> guest: i think so. all i can tell you is i detected a less of a desire than i have ever seen to go after the powers that be no matter who they are because when we sense, my producer not that they didn't want certain stories perceived to be going after political interests we offered stories that had nothing to do with politics. we offered investigations that had to do with taxpayer issues, charities that were accused of wrongdoing consumer fraud stories, business fraud stories. they at the end did not want any of it from us so we felt we were at loggerheads with the broadcasters who didn't want to take on anything that we offered unless it was a controversy covered by everybody else. the phonecall and you probably know i'm talking about in e-mails that say we have a "new

york times" story can you match it? "huffington post" says this. "washington post" says this. not that those are aren't sometimes very legitimate reports to look at but every good reporter that i know and there are many wants to do their own reporting. the reason they are hired as they have their own sources in their own expertise and can turn out stories as good as the one in an the north -- "new york times" is not better but there've bosses are telling them to copy the paper. >> host: you're obviously being paid as an investigative journalist uncover things that are being reported elsewhere. >> guest: iis call that added value. i want to bring added value to any story they assigned me to or anything that i brought to the table i wanted to take on issues for a variety of reasons orphaned stories that for some reason were getting the kind of attention that i thought they deserved and i thought the public would think were more deserving and that's the scale i thought i brought to the table. >> host: so this book again is

in the obama white house. what if your interactions been likened the layout very separate controversies and scandals if you will that you cover. but overall this again is an administration and a person that came in promising one precedent and transparency and what has that been like? >> guest: looked come after clinton i think we all said hopefully there'll be a change when bush comes in and things will be better and more transparent. bush came in and i don't think things are more transparent. if anything i think there were a little worse. obama comes and we are all sing okay he promised things will be better. he put out an edict that says freedom of information request will be answered during on the side of writing information. it's disappointing where they stand politically as a journalist to see there was this great hope for the ability to have more tools to do our jobs

better and then to find i think there's general agreement because reporters have said so from the maritimes in the "washington post" and washington correspondents in white house photographers, we have all agreed that is most difficult administration that we have dealt with in recent years. so that's the foundation but i would just tell you there was a pushback that has always existed. every administration has its own form to stop negative stories but perhaps aggressively directed at me and i know there've reporters who does this sort of reporting but it was a daily thing that i believe they must have meetings because of the way probably twice a day meetings the contacts made by people at the white house would surprise a lot of people in the public when i told them they would e-mail me they will e-mail my boss. they were e-mail colleagues and call my boss. they will get their surrogates involved in media matters on the

web. they will do social media campaigns. before you know if there's a movement trying to controversialized any story they don't like or the reporters were covering it, the whistleblowers who are telling the truth and even once loyal obama demonstrations employees marginalizing the president. it's just a very aggressive campaign more so than what i experienced under the other demonstrations. >> host: that obviously as you laid out clinton came in with a certain amount of transparency and bush to obama and the fact that there isn't obviously sets up a certain pattern. >> guest: i think and i've heard other reporters say the same thing. i think we are all of the same mindset. every administration is going to be tighter to be tied up in alaska doesn't matter who's in charge. the federal prayer prescient politicians for whatever reason to get more powerful to covet information they somehow think

they own the public information. they forget it's our information and they act like they're asking to see some sort of corporate proprietary secret. i think it's our job as the press to provide the pension that doesn't get out in the public. here's her freedom of information act freedom of information act request and here's her lawsuit because you didn't answer. no you can keep us other public building. no you don't get to choose which reporters cover your story which they do. i don't think we have provided the boundaries we have and the more we give up as a press the harder it is a thing for us to get those rights back. those are hard-fought and once lost i don't know how you go back and take them back no matter who's in charge. >> host: is the public on our side in terms of the letters that we submitted in 2013, complaints about photo sprays

when the white house advance in the oval office and maybe they just released still photos. is it too in the weeds for the average joe to have sympathy for reporters who again they don't hold in very high regard? >> guest: i think a lot of people pay no attention but among those who care yes i think people to care. i've heard that a lot just from people who consider themselves a apolitical, people who consider themselves obama supporters. they overall do believe the press has a role to play in providing back to natural tension with government or whoever the powers that be are and we are supposed to question authority and that's the dynamic i argue that has been turned into those who question authority. in other words if a reporter report something you don't like you credit a reporter and if the whistleblower blows the whistle discredit the whistleblower and instead all the attention is being turned on the wrong side and that's part of that -- being

somewhat successful. >> host: 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 a you make the argument that perhaps reporters didn't want to engage for whatever reasons or the network didn't talk about how you came to the fast and furious scandal and what it was and what their reaction was from the white house. >> guest: it came as an anonymous letter sent to my producer a copy of the letter from senator grassley from the department of justice asking if this program by federal agents were helping facilitate the delivery of assault rifles and other weapons into the hands of mexican drug cartel. he was asking if this was true and i could tell by the tone of this letter familiar with how he works -- on the inside.

of course it peaked our interest. grassley wouldn't return my calls so i was stuck with a letter in no contact of my producer and i began getting on line and finding sources of contacts. one thing led to another and we were able to talk to enough people that he believed to be true. we had excellent sources. the first story had nobody on camera by name making allegations that we had plenty of reliable off-camera sources. after the first story which the evening news is that -- lead it and let it go for a long time until five minutes he said write the story needs to be written. the story could never have been done that way. after that story there was incredible reaction in a pushback as we call it from the demonstration saying all these

people were liars which we now know. they were all telling the truth at all my reporting wrong which we all know now is correct and the pushback that tells me i may be onto something because i knew my sources were good good. there were internal memos someone had written to me with government officials from atf e-mailing other public relations and government officials inside atf saying that goodness nobody else was picking up on the story and let's turn out some positive press to drown out the cbs story puts also told megan perhaps we are onto something. so we were on the wall for a little while and finally got a very brave sitting atf federal agent to blow the whistle on camera by name so it became irrefutable and undeniable after that. after a couple of weeks when it looked like the story, i never thought it would lead to the attorney general the white house house, a phoenix arizona gun story of some kind and looked as though it were going higher.

there were allegations of the department of justice that clear wiretaps in the case and about and perhaps had white house knowledge. interest in the story at cbs stopped at least among the key people that discern what to put on television. now the story kept going and we kept digging up a lot of information. long before the story it had way more to be uncovered but the interest fell off and i think i was a pattern i describe in a number of stories whereby initially the stories were very welcome and applauded internally nsa satellites which goes off. >> host: is the light switch in your estimation does it have anything to do with investigative report at some point about fast and furious and at some point it becomes partisan partly because you have the attorney general before congress and there are these hearings and he is held in contempt. is that part of the reason for

what is your sense? >> guest: i would argue it doesn't become partisan simply because the attorney because the attorney general is called in to a hearing. how would you not call the attorney general into a hearing? if he doesn't interest her a subpoena wise and he called in to contempt? not only is it seen as partisan i argue in the book it's a deliberate campaign not that it wouldn't be seen to some degree that way anyway but there is a blooper campaign in my opinion to spend these negative stories in a negative way and the report is controversialized, the story is are commercialized and the whistleblower is controversialized. if you discredit those things you don't have to answer the facts of the story. they acknowledge they were walking guns and they give false information to congress. the president stepped in with the executive privilege on why the story was important. i think the story had its merits but i think it was to some

degree successfully controversialized including inside cbs by managers who sometimes have an ideological issue that they couldn't deal with properly on their own in my opinion or had other reasons they wanted to avoid that story but i can tell having been in the business for 30 years my producer and i know when something's up. >> host: the trajectory of a story like that does not follow its natural trajectory. at some point you talk about in the book they ask you whether or not you got an interview with eric holder and she tried to do an interview with eric holder's wife and that doesn't happen but after that -- >> guest: that's when i noticed. they were very excited about the story. they cleared two additional stories i conducted interviews for. katie contacted me and asked if

i would have an interview. she didn't do the interview and after that week the stories were planted one was cut entirely in the one that they did air was cut down drastically and that's when the appetite clearly stopped. >> host: at some point their stories and at times i think suggest that holder was exonerated. >> guest: it took a long time with the inspector general investigating. i'm always watching for these things more so than others. this is not about kenya prove the president of the united states knew it or eric holder personally knew everything and otherwise it's not a story. that's kind of how the press pleaded it. the people who perpetuated this and were found guilty by the inspector general's office like

a dozen employees of mismanagement were operating under the obama administration on the half of air colder under the president of the united states. it's still important whether eric holder read his briefings on it or not. he denied even though he was in direct briefings in fast and furious by more than one of his top aides. i don't remember reading the briefings and things like that. it's accepted at face value that he properly didn't oversee agents that were running a cross-border international gunrunning organization for over a year. he just didn't notice or know about it that's fine but still it's a huge story and i think some of the press had the idea that you have to prove a certain level of involvement by an official or else it's a nonstory. >> host: and there was the framing of fast and furious by folks in the liberal press started under bush. that was something you heard.

>> guest: there is some truth to the idea that i was the first to report this. i learned quickly on after fast and furious that an earlier operation called wide receiver have been tried under bush and abandoned because it was so controversial. in other words the bush administration justice department u.s. attorney's office according to my sources saw this as potentially perilous because the guns of men walked in they didn't want to bring the cases to trial. it was a smaller operation with the same idea. one of the officials was working under bush and obama when this happened. then when president obama came into office they were apparently looking for gun casings and they pick that one up and started to read prosecutors. in the process they learn that the guns have been walked and disgusted. even the justice department was telling congress that it never happened under any

administration. there were internal memos that show they were talking about gun walking and how people in the public understand that this had come to light. so was -- there was an element in that under the bush administration. what i have to say about that as i had a manager who was on my side about fast and furious should be getting more attention. he advised me to mention the bush connection every time and maybe they will run more of these stories. 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 the obama angle. >> host: and another of your reports looked at green energy and of course we know part of the stimulus package that obama passed in his first months in office, lot of money went to green energy and giving money to these green energy companies for solar panels are battery-operated cars.

and it became part of the 2012 campaign. i remember mitt romney pointing to a particular business that went belly-up solyndra was one of them at 35 million in loan guarantees that went bankrupt. talk to me about the story this investment in the green energy companies what you found out. guess i didn't cover cylinder. when there's a big story and it's pretty well covered and not worrying about that but if i find an angle that hasn't been widely covered or if the network doesn't stand on the company i start digging. green energy after cylinder other examples of wasteful spending in which we should have known in advance or did know in advance it was proven that the money was going to go down the tubes with political conflicts of interest and so on. it was $90 billion in the stimulus money and more money

had been given under bush prior to that which i look at as well. part of the money had gone to green energy initiatives. i didn't see any stories as for oregon's green energy. it had nothing to do with that. everybody wants green energy to work. i felt this was a taxpayer funding issue and i had specialized in doing those stories for many years. people appreciate the stories especially when the government is low on money and you point to these areas of waste. i started digging around into the report by companies who got a lot of tax dollars and we were shocked at what they showed it had not been widely reported. if you look at the companies report the federal government was required to tell the truth is completely different than the press release is being issued by them and by the government on their behalf. i went down that road and started reporting on the green energy issues. there were so much to report and be uncovered on many different levels on the first story i did was again very well received by

the ceo of cbs news and everybody all the way down but it was terrific. i had many more in the line-up to investigate and that was it. there was incredible pushback from the white house. they were oversensitive about it. >> host: this was a time when obama was touring some of the factories with battery-operated cars and trying to tout their success of this package and the cars and solar panels that were really going to change the economy and change your dependence on fuel and things like that. >> guest: that's right and i argue and i do believe this if you have bush and cheney instead of obama and biden attending all of these groundbreaking ceremonies for big corporate people who got a lot of tax

money and in some cases made political donations to them they would be found quickly to be going belly-up by hundreds of millions of dollars after getting taxpayer money i think you would have seen all of them lose. these factors will be full of thousands of workers making cars and many show a contrast. they are not that nobody was doing that. the stark and obvious examples of happened in the obama administration so i was digging back and i thought it was a great story. they detail a lot of it in the book. after loving the story all of a sudden there was no more. >> host: this question of what you have against green energy comes up. >> guest: my producer and i and a few others that were trying to help get the stories on television were saying what is that they don't like about a story? they would never say we don't like the story and your story is conservative. we don't like you.

they would say it's not interesting or these other nebulous thing so we would try to think what is it they don't like. we concluded and i think it was proven rightfully so that one of the main gatekeepers for scott pelley just thought the public would be soured on green energy if they thought their money was being wasted. that seemed to be confirmed by a manager who overheard a conversation in new york. when one manager was trying to get the executive producer to run some of the stories that i was sending notes around about because they were incredible stories. the answer this person said to pat was what's the matter don't you support green energy? that set it all to me. she couldn't get outside of her head and understand these were stories about green energy and you have to trust the public to allow the public to make up their own mind. you don't look at a story because you are afraid it might draw the love wrong conclusion about something you care about.

>> host: whether instances and you mentioned the gunrunning story. that might make it more palatable to folks of the network. could you figure that out for green energy? >> guest: when a person that buys me to do that with fast and furious i refuse to do it. i had done the whole piece on it and i will mention it when appropriate but i'm not going to work it into a story. when appropriate yes but i'm not going to contrive a story for the sake of getting it on. on green energy i can't think of the way they would have accepted. in fact one of the stories i turned down would have been perfect. actually producer found the 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 to support companies that were owned by koreans who had brought in korean workers and i believe it was michigan instead of

hiring local jobs. so the local unions objected and they were the letter to the democratic congresspeople and to the president. they were worried about this. we have undercover video of the korean nationals working the factories. we haven't done a terrific story. they didn't want that but i thought that was good for the sense of it's not a democrat versus republican story. they can call it a conservative story. it's actually some democrats raising issues with other democrats so i have caught republicans doing the same thing. >> host: you of course are no longer at cbs. officially there seems to be no comment. >> guest: no comment. other reporters have told me that they are quietly just saying disparaging things about me but i expected that. i don't think everybody is doing that. i think a few key people are. i got quite a bit of support from people who know what i say is true.

some of them i quote in the book and i got a really nice e-mail from someone i didn't know very well who said he thought it something positive was coming from the ugliness as he called it. so i'm pretty pleased overall with reaction. i thought it was a bumpier ride. >> host: another topic you cover in the book is benghazi where two americans are killed one of them was ambassador stevens on september 11, 2012 right in the middle of a presidential campaign. it becomes a topic of debate and really fights over wording whether or not obama -- talk to me about benghazi and also the role cbs seemed to play in having this information about something obama said and not going with it.

>> guest: four americans were killed and one of the stories when cbs asked me to start digging around because they sense something we need to look at a lot of reporters were covering it. as a team we started digging and my producer and i got a lot of important advances of the story. it was clear almost immediately that the administration was hiding information as they wouldn't answer certain questions. >> host: and what caused it. >> guest: there were so many unanswered questions and initially like the other stories cbs was very receptive with several weeks of stories we did. it was digging deeply and starting to get some answers to questions that every step made the administration's response look worse. as we were doing a better job

again i was using democratic sources inside the administration and documents from the obama administration. it wasn't a phony scandal. they were in some cases lifelong democrats who were giving information because they had thought something had gone drastically wrong. the lights went when off. it got to be more and more sensitive story as election got closer and the story was controversialized. they didn't want more of those stories at some point even though i thought much more had to be done on the story. i've didn't stop investigating and i published a lot on the web. >> host: is the idea here that there's a presidential election going on and we don't want to put her thumb on the scale in any way at cbs? >> guest: i don't know what conversations they had. they just said they thought the story had been so well covered

and what else was there left to say. they never said things like that. they had discussions among themselves like that or maybe they told themselves that on the other hand they took other actions i would argue that they put their foam on the scale and he referred to one of them. we had unbeknownst to me at the time i was covering benghazi we have a clip inside cbs from 60 minus correspondent steve kroft conducting the interview on september 13 for september 12 about president obama in the rose garden. we never aired a clip but it seemed very relevant several months later. in the clip steve kroft said to the president something like mr. president you use the word terrorism and the president says, right. steve said why is that in it and he said something about it's something about his too early to tell. putting aside the fact that the

documents said al-sharia was responsible. it was no question about wording was used. that was raised later and you may remember in the debate with romney when romney said to the pressure you didn't call this a terrorist attack. why are you implying there was a cover-up that i didn't want the world to know? he said yesterday and checked the tape. >> host: the rose garden ceremony they came in and said it was ready. >> guest: we had a tape that proves the present by his own admission from because he did avoid using the term. again i didn't know it existed until several weeks later when they talked about a ripe for the election. what's worse not only did we not reveal that clip i and another correspondent in covering benghazi were directed by the new york managers to use a different part of the interview that we were provided with the contacts we were told to use

that gave the opposite impression that the president had said the opposite of what we now know he said about a complicated story. we have been a party to directing a narrative in a specific direction intentionally giving the impression that something had happened and it had not happened at all. something that was directly relevant to the news again shooting ourselves in the foot because that's something we could have given value-added to the viewers exclusively relevant to the campaign and for her recent. >> host: in those moments when you see this going on and cbs hasn't commented on the book and what you say in the book but in the moments what do you do? are you nervous about being a troublemaker? where their interactions with your bosses? >> guest: it's never a comfortable place to be but clearly i'm not worried about being labeled a troublemaker. i wasn't alone.

when we found out what the clip said and the friday before the election another reporter brought it to my attention. we both knew it had to be published. we never should've been published already in several of us not just me but a couple of others got together and contacted her managers and worked with them. they immediately agreed that we have made a really big mistake. i argued it was clearly intentional and nobody denied that. we tried to figure out how to publish it quickly so at least we could say even if lisp related it was published prior to the election we posted it sunday night before the election. >> host: in many ways may be too little too late because a lot of this had article on non-. >> guest: my main concern at some point for much of my career i thought it would be the rest of my career and i really did have cbs's protection in mind. i had been there and i knew we

would have to show assumes that came to our attention we took the proper actions to rectify it. that is what was important to me. it must be published quickly and before the election because i thought if the president wins and it comes out afterwards which surely it would because people were talking about it inside cbs. it would look as though we affected the outcome of election are tried. we published it before it would be harder to say we have had some sort of an outcome on an important issue. we did get it published and i felt good that we did. it was awkward for us to be talking about something like this and saying something to them about it but it had to be done. >> host: in another big story, health care and the launch of the web site which as we all remember didn't go well for the white house at all. what do you make of -- talk about the general coverage of it and talk about your coverage.

>> guest: i think the press was asleep at the switch. i include myself. i didn't look at healthcare.gov one was being developed. when i finally looked into it and i was assigned to other stories. three weeks in cbs came to me and said start taking a look. they were so many warning signals. there were congressional hearings and testimony evidence. there were security sensitivity. there were so many red flags. >> host: why do you think that happens? why is their blind spot is there so much going on? how hard is it to build a web site? >> guest: i don't know. i think again we took the administration's word for it. i argue in the book that there's a trend that i don't understand that we are often taking a corporation or government or whatever administration they

issue something and it used to be the most of this new to say okay that's what they want us to report. let's verified and look for the facts and make sure they are true. i started hearing the last couple of years at cbs more often than i had a manager or your colleague would say let's see what the government said and that was the final word and that was what we expected. i think by and large people wanted health care to work. people think health care should be changed in this country. >> host: that wasn't the sense of the broken part of it was going to be this web site. maybe they would mess up in terms of the different things like expansion. >> guest: although again there were signs. there were signals when you look back in hindsight. maybe if we had looked closer but who knows. maybe we wouldn't have caught that. certainly three weeks into the recognition we needed stronger

reporting i think we all did. i think all the networks got on it in the newspapers did. there was good reporting done and then the light switch went off. i have that carefully monitored the network since that after certain point i matter how important i thought the stories were to dig up, my producer and i, they didn't want them. there were some very --. >> host: the web site got fixed. >> guest: after the web site was fixed when for example it was considered a good deal for a short time that something like 4 million people were losing their insurance. the whole controversy. that was rightfully so a big deal. when i went to them and said -- i found evidence with the help of people who support obamacare and insiders pointed out to me that it was in the cbo projections and the government's projections that something like 13 million more are going to be bumped off their work insurance.

i said this is the least important because we are talking about more than three times the number of what you thought was important last week and they suddenly were like let's wait until it happens. so my producer and i went off and discovered it was already happening. several people were losing their work insurance. we came back to them and said we have examples on the record that it has happened. you know i have no time for that program. it was really stunning to me that he could bring them important issues. more people were paying attention according to polls for healthcare.gov during this time period not just the of the whole issue than a typhoon that killed so many people internationally. more people -- we were not covering any of the elements once the light switch went off. >> host: cbs is different from "fox news" and "msnbc" because it has 30 minutes every night. i guess you have the morning show as well but that's 30

minutes of tightly edited curated news but still you are saying -- >> guest: i have this example in the book. the same day a poll showed how many people were interested in healthcare.gov a huge percentage of the american public we were putting on stories largely the same stories that the three networks had not mentioned an important hearing with developments on healthcare.gov. both pro and con testimony. they just weren't reporting on it at all at some point even though it remained a major issue in the eyes of most americans. >> host: talk a bit about, you begin the book was really this kind of harrowing experience. freaky maybe or weird or creepy.

you were having these odd occurrences with your phone in a suspected maybe you were being spied on and someone was tapping your phone's. you seem to have a lot of faith in verizon coming out to help you. they do come out i think on new year's day. talk about that and this is how you begin the book. >> guest: i want to point out in hindsight i certainly never thought i was being surveilled or monitored by the government. a few things guess were happening but i didn't think it was connected to a surveillance effort. the only reason i thought of it at all was because people came to me in the fall of 2012 people familiar with government practices and said you're been gauzy reporting is pretty close to home in pretty good. you know you are probably being monitored because of it. these aren't crazy people. these are decent sources so i was like what do you mean? over time one of them was able

to connect me to aid expert. a forensics expert was able to look at a computer and identified a long-term monitoring surveillance that had gone on on my computer that included heatstroke monitoring, activation of my skype so they could listen to audio. they had my password and they were in the cvs system. >> host: at some point the computer turns on at night. >> guest: in retrospect experts think is maybe why during a nighttime my computers were turning on and people were beginning to warn me that i was surveilled. the computers would come on it either and i thought it was a normal thing. and experts say what you're describing is not a normal handshake that computers do. this is something different. one thing led to another and ultimately i had three separate

computer forensics examines each of confirmed not just my laptop of my home apple desktop computer highly sophisticated remote intrusion efforts that were ongoing for quite some time. >> host: i think some critics have said well she hasn't been fully open about this. she has been essentially released a report with names on it that says this is what happened. do you feel that's a fair criticism? >> guest: i have some information in the book and the name of the expert but while the investigation is going on there won't be reports following my attorney's advice. i'm really not doing this to prove to the critic who will never be convinced of anything. i am pursuing this and people can believe it or not they want to. it doesn't matter to me, and just telling that my observations and experiences and a lot separate level i want to make sure that who did this does

not go into the night unnoticed. they now know that i know and i know what they did deliver that day isn't my want to expose them. if people want to disregard if they are free to. to simply tell what i know and what the forensics said as much as i can in the book and you are free to believe it or say it never happened. >> host: this is part of a larger story that a lot of us have been hearing about government surveillance of everyone. but also part of a sliver of that is the white house's interaction with journalists and investigating leaks. talk about that as a part of the book as well. >> guest: again for those who think it's crazy that the government could be in your computer, one of the first forensic computer exams confirmed as a proprietary government agency but for anyone who thinks it's silly i would

say you haven't been paying attention to the news. now we have the contacts we didn't have during my original incident since then we know as you know that the government has overreached in my opinion pretty far in its handling of the press through the government has acknowledged or perhaps overreachoverreach ed in surveillance of private citizens just as my sources have said when they came to me. i think it's a very serious matter when you have people worried about making phonecalls and communicating on e-mail because they assume they are being watched. do you assume your comedic asian's could be monitored whether it's the phone at the computer? >> host: i do. if it's my bosses at work i think there is that expectation. >> guest: your bosses have a right to. that was what was in the back of my mind but the idea that the government 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 their phonecalls are being monitored. we know the government has acknowledged looking at phone records and members of congress and their staff in the intelligence committee i believe it was. where is it and if anyone -- everyone starts being afraid. if everyone is afraid that everything they say could be monitored or used against them are found out about to change the tone of how you do business and how you think. >> host: that trend coming just as people seem freer than ever to face all sorts of things on facebook and twitter and are very open about their private lives. >> guest: i think that's one reason a lot of people told me that this has been revealed they are not so worried. i say that in the book that i have no secret. either broken any law and i don't care if the government looks at me. i think it doesn't matter whether you have done anything wrong. you may trust today's government but do you know who's going to be in charge tomorrow? do you trust that nobody outside the government that even though

you have done nothing wrong there couldn't possibly be someone who would try to make an effort to make it look as if you've done something wrong? i think it's a culture today where people give up so much of their privacy maybe they are not as worried as they ought to be. i think journalists should have a concern. >> host: briefing journalists to be looking now? you are an investigative journalist and maybe you are going to give away too many secrets about what you are looking at but are their stories you would like -- do you think the press is ignoring? >> guest: the press certainly isn't ignoring terrorism but i think there's a lot more to be uncovered for the steady march of terrorism which i think counterterrorist experts think are coming here. i think the immigration story has been well covered. some aspects of it but not others. >> host: certainly the political press might cover the politics of it more than the

nitty-gritty reporters on the ground. guess i think the positive aspects of the contributions illegal immigrants have made to the country and the good part about them being here and the people who have come here and become good citizens and make contributions and served in wartime and the unfair things that happen to them. i think that's been well covered. don't think it has been covered the perils that come with that. we don't want to say that could be bad repercussions and they are dealing with it because i have been on board in these border towns and to cbs's credit we did it covered story that had to do with some of these issues for sunday morning. i think that's an important issue that deserves more coverage than i would just say in general medical stories. a huge variety that we have not well covered in my opinion partly because the pharmaceutical industry fight so

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