noun. most days it's plural. you have each of these four fundamental directorates. now, it's not in the book, it is the book, it is post right in the book but john brennan our successors there. he is trying to cut through those four cylinders. >> exactly but we need to wrap up. >> so multiple cultures and you have to learn to deal with each. >> i love your final quote in one chapter and i will close with that because it it's a nice guide to the way you operate as well as a great guide to people and it said, you're the only superpower in the room but don't act like it. >> that is right. that is my guidance. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> [inaudible]

>> the final program from book tvs campaigns issue block on form policy is with the washington post joby warrick who discusses his pulitzer prize winning book, black flags, the rise of isis from last weekend's national book festival. >> [inaudible] >> hello everybody. my name is marty and i am thetha direct executive editor of the

washington post. the washington post has been a charter sponsor of the national book festival since the beginning and we're happy to do it again this year.i the library of congress has been the festivals host since the festival began 16 years ago.rs we think the chairman of the festival, and that many national book festival sponsors who made the event possible this year. you can make a donation to the festival by checking the information in your program. there'll be time for questions after we are done and this isaf being filmed as well. you should know that. so, to her our speaker, the washington post has gratified to have some of the finest national security reporters of the country. a stand standout among them is a joby warwick. is when you read black flags, the rights of isis isis you'll see why. there's a seriousness of purpose, the relentless reporting and how he embraces nuance while never losing his wing complexity.

there is his eye for revelatory detail and his talent for committing your attention with the finest techniques of storytelling. this is such a good story that hbo has a movie in development. and with bradley cooper as executive producer. were hoping it will be may.he ms this is, as the new york times wrote in its review a gripping book of novelistic energy in the most revealing portrait yet of abu was sad i -- as our country aims to destroy isis and as isis seeks to metastasize beyond irau and syria there cannot be a more urgent and timely treatment of the subject. as isis and terrorism takes center stage in a presidential race this book offers a refuge in actual facts. imagine that. in an absorbing history of ouros

times and a sober assessment of failures across the politicall and governmental landscape, for good reason "black flags "was offered the nonfiction pulitzer prize. it reveals the long arc of today's most dangerous extremist threats. all of us at the post were enormously proud when the pulitzer board recognize the excellence of joby's work. it is not, by the way the first time they had done so. the price for black flags was joby's second pulitzer pre- untran. he's previously previously one in 1996 about articles on the environmental of the hog farming industry written with two colleagues at the newspaper and colic. in the two decades since that book, since that were, joby hasy

been a church colic at the post. he is as soft spoken and gracious as he is diligent, determined, and dedicated. so not just the superb reporter, but also a wonderful human being. it is a real pleasure and honor to introduce a joby warwick. [applause]it i >> thank you for that. it is a pleasure to be with you and an honor to be introduced by my boss. i have been with the post is marty set for 20 years. i've worked with for some legendary editors from the bradley's family and i can tell you the post has never been in better hands than it is right now.. the fact that we, here in washington, i know you must get mad at us at least once per day. that is is part of our job too.e

but the fact that we have a quality newspaper of the caliber of the washington post and it continues to be so ambitious, so energetic, and just so committed to his mission is a reflection of the people at the top. i feel privileged work for marty and i think you should all be gratefu to be in a town and in a country that has editors like marty. thank. thank you again for those words, marty. [applause] book festivals and i have done my paper book tour now so i'm used to this.c is imp they typically authors will tell charming in adult and funny stories but i wrote a book about isis. the material does not really lend itself to funny, witty stories. but the topic is important, i think you all know that and that is why you're here. when i do travel the country people are confused about this organization.id they are afraid and of course there part afraid. i think our political leaders are confused right now based on the rhetoric

of the campaign trail. my purpose in doing this book was to bring clarity. that is what i think my special gift as a journalist. i helped to take complicated stories and make people understand what they are are about.pl that's what i do in the book and that's what i'm going to try tob do briefly today. i will show pictures. we will start with a video, photo montage which is boiling down the history of isis to three minutes. this is a summary, after this is over we'll talk about characters behind isis. this is. this is my video introduction.it it is isis so it is dark, buttnn it's nothing it's a preview of our discussion today i hope you can all read subtitles. >> [inaudible] [inaudible]

[speaking in native language] [inaudible]

>> [inaudible] >> [speaking in native language] >> [speaking in native language]

>> so, my book "black plague" is a story of origin. it is a character sketch digging into histories of the men behind isis. i'm going to talk about five personalities today starting with it zarqawi, theobe most innovative and continuinger on summa the others who so we start with him the godfather and the founder because he really pioneered all of the task dicks we see isis using today including the beheadings of mens he was an original and dispensable force. isis could not exist without him. and in a strange way as you can see, abu musab al-zarqawi could not have existed without us. so let's understand him as a way to get into our topic.vi

every terrace starts out life as a kid, cute little kid. here he is in 1968 with his mom. the thing is he was not a cute kid, he was a bad scene from the beginning, he was in trouble from the time of middle school on. not just tom sorry mischief but cutting kids with razors, using drugs, he drank, he was a violent, vicious, he drank, he was a violent, vicious and was in it for trouble. by the time he is a teenager,en anything but a religious guy, extensive criminal record, then he gets a bit of a religious conviction and then even more importantly like many other men in his region he decides in the late 1990s to go fight jihad which means it's -- in this the beginning of the organism organization that were familiar with today.he he joined the army and gets involved in the civil war and the silk violent young man and

he's good at one thing which is killing people and it's the running at the likes of bin laden. then the war and it's pretty much that way for zarqawi and friends. they don't have anything to do and they want to try to keep this going so they start to look for ways that they can build their own little jihadist sell. they're wondering what they can do it peaceful jordan and they start attacking and go after bars and liquor store and get the idea of attacking part of. so they send a guy into a porno house with a bomb and blow the place up. the key goes goes in and gets engrossed in the movie and forgets all about them bomb which then blows up at his feetd he loses both of his legs and nobody gets hurt but these are

the kind of knuckleheads we were dealing within the 19 nineties. the jordanians. the jordanians get tired of these guys, this is a problem for them so they lock them up, they they lock up zarqawi and his followers. so these guys are trying to be contained and corralled in prison.ent, z but in jail they end up being corralled together because jordanians are afraid that if there is a general population they would start to affect other people so they are by themselves, about 50 and one cell. this becomes edgy hottie university where the egg each other on and share ideology and talk about tactics. it turns out to be not a good thing. out of this environment zarqawi emergence as a very charismatic leader. here's where he gets a couple of incredible breaks. his most recent it's to prison for 15 years and 2009 he spent all those years in jail, we never would've heard of them. in 1999 something happen.ad5 im the king of jordan dies. there is a tradition of amnesty in jordan, if the king dies

there's a general amnesty for political prisoners. so parliament comes up with a list of people to be pardoned. the tribes come up with theirabb own list and then about 2000 people and up getting freed. among them is it zarqawi's entire band and out they go ten years ahead of schedule. so he goes off to the place where he really loves the most, withh afghanistan and tries to unite with osama bin laden, his hero. it turns out that bin ladenden a wants nothing to do with him.thd even for bin laden, the mastermind of 9/11 this young kid, this, this hothead who doesn't know much about islam,n. he's not very smart, his very violent and crude, he is too bad even for al qaeda. they reject him, kick him a, sent him off to the other end of afghanistan to start his own little thing. often goes and once again if he had stayed out there we never would've heard of zarqawi everml again.de

but then the second miracle happens for him. in february 2003, the united states is getting ready to invade iraq. were trying to make our case to the un and other people around the world as to why we want toy do this. one is a weapons this. one is a weapons of mass destruction, the other was the' possibility that al qaeda could collaborate with this terrible iraqi dictator saddam hussein if there's some sort of collusion between the two they could be more dangerous. this is is theu. pitch we make to the un. if mr. powell is making this speech to the seaside is the prime example of the problem but our friend zarqawi. so just based on circumstantial evidence he seems to be the right guy, he's in iraq at the time, living in the border area between iraq and iran. he's had contact with al qaeda in the past and we've seen a perfect a poster child for thepr problem that the u.s. is describing. so this is the case that is me. it turns out entirely untrue there's no truth to the connection to al qaeda. he wasn't in al qaeda or working with saddam hussein's government. that one poster made him a celebrity overnight. suddenly he is receiving money, support, support, and recruits from around the world. he becomes an overnight

celebrity in the jihadist community. he has a vision to fight a superpower and it's going to be the united states and in iraq. they move themselves to baghdad. in 2320 for the americans.lonels when he gets there he built alliances. he is a crazy guy who wants to start a terrorist movement. he has all the kinds of allies because the iraqi army has been disbanded. all the kernels, generals a major still have jobs anymore. jobs anymorea they're looking to fight back.o he has everybody who was a professional who is the pockets. everybody everybody looking for leadership and he moves into this new surgeon see as we see it unfolding a 2003. he has a good helper strategy and goes out looking for important targets. he goes after the un headquarters and kills the leader of the un mission in iraq. he goes after ngos and other groups that would help the united states and give us the cover of legitimacy and drives them home. then, more importantly he goes

through the sunni shia divide.cu they have been living togetheron reasonably well for decades but zarqawi decides to start a civil war. he blows at their most important mosca, kills their leaders, and suddenly you have reprisal killings and shooting back and forth between two groups that had gotten along well together. strategically look at what he did it was very smart. he isolated us in iraq and then sets off a civil war around us. by 2004 and 2005 we are in bad shape in terms 2005 we are in bad shape in terms of our occupational plans for iraq. so this is kind of background for zarqawi because he is bigger ambition. he wants to become an international star. he feels he has a destiny. he developed the notion that no matter what kind of bombing or shooting you might be able to do, there's nothing more gripping and more horrible thano

watching a single execution. so he grabs a random american off the street, kid named burke from philadelphia. take them into a cell, sits them down with an orange jumpsuit, the image were familiar with and he personally, that's zarqawi reading the script he personally be heads this young man with his own hands. this becomes his calling card, many beheadings will follow. the violence he unleashes tears up the country follow. the violence he unleashes tears up the country and it's too much even for al qaeda. so that's not the only difference. zarqawi begins tojut launch a n media campaign with himself at the center using social media platforms just becoming available. so you have the great bearded osama bin laden, reading the sermon from behind a podium, very boarding. then you have this jihadist action figure, like a black ninja firing his machine gun and killing americans with his own hands. young jihadists around the world eat this up. then he is brash enough to make up his own rules because he is not even a high school graduate. le's not very smart. smart. but he doesn't understand theology and that's liberating to him because he doesn't bother to worry about whether he is committing acts that are very islamic like targeting innocent

muslim women and children in suicide attacks. then he begins think about a big idea which is the idea of restoring the ancient caliphate. the islamic empire of centuries past. he regards themselves as inspired to asher in a new age of ultra pure islam driving out western governments along with brutally destroying everyone else's who stands in his waynd from corrupt governments to things like the shiites. the struggle would end in a mighty battle, and and armageddon. in which armies of islam would finally feed the christianity as some profits were told. this will be his history. i'm the sparky used to say. heating it to see it because he was by now public enemy number one. we poured vast resources into stopping him. he took us nearly three years to to track him down but eventually our intel and grounds forces and special operations team found a formula for defeating him and hissne network.

without his safe house in 2006 and drop a couple of bombs on it. that's the end of zarqawi and sell. we dismantle the leadership killing number two and three, just as we're figuring this outt other things happen. the iraqi - sunni tribes are against the zarqawi followers. we have the mm bar awakening. the u.s. troop search happen. by 2009 all nine all that is left is a few hundred followers who are being driven deep underground and heidi. al qaeda in iraq would be essentially be. but not everybody thought so. here's our second isis personality. we now know him as a bae-3, he's is the leader vices today. so in no time people would not have injured him as a leader. he is zarqawi's opposite. kind of shy and boring, his bicycle wasn't very impressive,d has a doctorate degree in islamic law.colleg abu bakr al-baghdadi joined

zarqawi's gangs because he still feels obliged to fight the infidels.ce aga he ends up going to jail for a while and has the prison experience and exposed to tough guys around him.h the ra and then he starts to rise up through the ranks, mostly because other leaders around him are getting killed. so in 2010 the leaders of -- decided they need different kind of leader. they pick this guy, bank two, heats an islamic scholar, abu bakr al-baghdadi and so he's no longer calling himself a qaeda in a and i rake. he called himself the islamic state of iraq. the state part is a joke because they know that there's no real state. one of the leader's wives reacted famously to this as where's the state you're talking about.in

we are living in the desert.sco but history intervenes again in isis's favor. just as he is coming to power u.s. troops are leaving iraq under agreements under the bush ministration. as soon as they're gone that shiite government feels emboldened to start settling old scores wish any scores wishing he tribes, resting their leaders in kicking out on me officers and then they begin to rebel against the government find a more interesting, and with zarqawi's' people and isis than with their own governments.il then, year later civil war breaks out in syria as we all well know.. this is a pivotal moment because it's an opportunity for them to start something new. to start their own militia group inside syria. they have a perfect a perfect incubator now with a lawless state, with violence and weapons in the have a new causen writing an oppressive dictator, aside, he stirring up problems with slaughtering civilians. they renamed renamed themselves yet again and now they are

islamic state of iraq in i sean or isis. they're the best fighters on the rubble side and they start to attract foreign recruits by the thousands. by 2014 they are readying to break out and they do so in dramatic fashion capturing the eastern half of syria. they invade iraq to declare the establishment of this islamic caliphate. by 2014 in the caliphate. by 2014 in the summer there powerhouse. 30,000 strong there able to overrun the iraqi troops, this is the isis were familiar with today. they're also very rich because after capturingg multiple, they have become the wealthiest terrorist group of all-time. the. the oil wells, they owned bankst and universities, hundreds of millions of dollars in currency. but really, beyond their wealth it is zarqawi's old organization. zarqawi. zarqawi embraced violence for its own sake and these guys do n their own same thing on a

grander scale. they also have a boldness to reinterpret islam anyway they want. as a data user religious scholar show he goes out of his way to create theological arguments to justify whatever he does per there's always a verse in the carotid that can be made to justify and make themselves appear to be muslims instead of barbarians. and just as zarqawi understood, isis did the same just got better at it. they are extremely skilled at harnessing the power of social media for recruitment, screening, indoctrination, training, all of which can be done at a distant before the recruit sets foot on syrian soil. but now instead of the shaky, handheld videos that zarqawi used to use, they have teams of professionals, video refers, working on products aiming at young men who grew up

on video games like call of duty. this work in the idea of isis becomes a powerful attraction. 35,000 foreigners to travel to the caliphate to join the army. far surpassing the foreign fighters who joined al qaeda in afghanistan are zarqawi's army. the movement has to size is and in a year there are nine ministates of isis around the world. in cells and dozens of places in concluding about 5000 isis recruits in europe alone. this brings us quickly toward experts now to, you may not recognize his name or image but you will remember what he did he lead the terrorist attack in last no member, his background c is typical to the norther europeans a second-generation, he lived in the slum made up of middle-class muslim immigrants,m he is a kid who do not fit in

and a society, is not really a religious muslim, is not a modern citizen of his family's adopted country. and that being radicalized imprisonment and when he joins isis he has two things he didn't have before. a sense of belonging and a cause. something that allows us suddemf misbehaved misfit to feel as those life counts. he traveled to syria and initially is distressed by the bloodshed. a few months later he's with the program and posting videos of himself dragging corpses behind cars. b he becomes the key coordinator for the isis attack in paris which was the biggest and final assignment. the two things we have to remember about abaaoud well i think about the stories that one, his emblematic of aconf population whose vulnerable to isis. a second generation of immigrants who feel conflictedt about their identities not integrated into their societies and struggling personally does not seem to have a sense of purpose or future. they're looking for meaning and

adventure and isis offers that. the second key thing, primary reason i think carries out attacks abroad as it once young men like abaaoud to feel more alienated. the more countries feel i threatened by isis it's better to crackdown on young muslims in profile, harass and make them feel more alienated. we know this because isis talks about it in their literature. just be for. just be for the paris attack last november isis put out an article that talks about the gray zone in your. this is the zone where millionsn of muslims feel conflicted aboui their identity and isis wants to force them to choose sides. the article says this, muslims muslims in the west will quickly find themselves between two choices. either they adopt the infidel

religion or they immigrate to the islamic state and escape prosecution. this is a binary choice for isis and it welcomes our help in driving muslims to their corner. for us in the west the solutions feel easier most politically powerful are often the ones that get us in a depot. real quickly, the fourth isis personality to talk about was never really a member of isis yet we are associate omar mateen and this is the man who walked into the pulse nightclub andubki killed 49 people and. he said he did it for isis. today there's no evidence he had any contact with isis in a serious way. in fact it suggests a very limited graph of his ideology but yet isis gets credit for the attack anyway and it becomes a talking point in our political discourse. here's what's interesting abouta mateen story, a young man who fits the profile of a typical northern european isis recruit. a son of muslim immigrant, so can generation again, trouble background in his twenties, and and feeling excluded and persecuted by the dominant culture. he embraces an ideology to feel empowered and important. even more striking is that he fits another profile. that of a typical typical perpetrator of

an american mass shooting event. there's a piece in today's washington post that makes this point. it knows that islamic men extremist like mateen share the same traits as regular masswe cn killers. all must all young men who struggle to fit in in their community, they feel it on eight and persecuted in some way, they also have a boastfulness and aer craving for attention. it's the same profile for example as a dylan roof, the young man from south carolina who shut up a church in south carolina and killed nine people. one expert makes this observation, omarre mateen has more in common with dylan roof than he does with osama bin laden. t isis just offer satan certain young man at different kind of excuse to carry out their revenge fantasy. it's depressing that i do like to always include the fact that there are reasons. to be hopeful for state right

now. if you fall the news you know the caliphate is in a series of attacks. they're losing ground, about half of what was once isis territory in iraq is now liberated. liberating means of your resources for isis, fewer towns towns and villages to exploit for cash. you see the map that the size of caliphate was shrinking.even they are faltering in the public relations world because people see the brutality and have packer see and even young, arab muslims are starting to turn away. this is a look at british in a y muslims. you see this in a years time support or opposition rather to isis it dropped from 65% to 85 percent. some what disturbing is the fact that the small group of people who breaks the idea of ideology has remained static. other good news, we have more and more muslim countries and muslim arabs taking on a greatem share of the fight for part dissipation in the air campaign to boots on the ground. this

makes it going slower but it's usually important because arab boots on the ground are vastly preferable to an occupation innovation by outside forces for obvious reasons. it's encouraging we are seeing more muslims take a public stand against extreme ideology. one of the world's great religions is being attacked from within and only other muslims have the standing to be able to defeat this. the king of jordan is organizing an effort by husband hundreds. they go to the top the illogical seminary in cairo to call for an islamic reformation saying to his leaders, we have to take back our religion. it it is a hopeful star but we need to see more. finally, despite the good news on the front lines i cannot be optimistic about defeating ideology in the near term.e neat here's why. i will and my fifth and final personality and i won't use his

real neighbor call him a mod. he seven years old and we met him in a refugee camp in germany.th he's one of thousands of young children who lived under isis. he is a bright, beautiful young boy who happened to live in the syria city of raqqa when isis took over. he was it the training camp learning how to use a gun, he was taught that his parents were not good muslims and he should report any bad behavior at home that was not islamic. he was taught that the greatest possible calling for a young man his age was to be a suicide bomber. he talked to us about witnessing execution and about going to a local park and find the bodies of men with their severed heads stacked up next to them. every now and then during the interview he would shut down ann asking for a timeout. at one point he asked for a piece of of paper so he could draw a picture of syria, his home. this is what he drew. he was telling us the story about something he personally witnessed. a man with one eye on the right side was a prisoner who was at the town square. the man on the left has a knifem and he be heads in. and below you see the one eyed man had line on the floor.fferen

we were in this country about isis recruits come about people being radicalized on the internet or traveling to iraq and syria to fight. we are facing entirely different problem with the generation of young people who grew up with this terror. i bring this up because when the caliphate does collapse and i thing were beginning to see the end of it, westerners cannot look away. we can't declare victory and go home because the seeds of countless tragedies are still out there now. who is going to provide psychological counseling for this young man? who is going to rebuild the city and the school? was going to rebuild the economy and offer hope for a job and family? it's overwhelming to think about the size of this task. it's one that's important not just for moral reasons but because of our own security. because our own security. because if we don't find a way to address this problem, you can be assured we'll be hearing from a mod or boys and girls from him in the future. future. you can be confident

that what we have witnessed in the last two years will come back to us again and again. thank you for your time. i'm tppy to take a few questions.fi [applause] >> thank you for your talk. and while depressing it is interesting. about like several months ago john kerry declared isis as having committed acts ofgr genocide. i'm wondering what your take on that is. i think it's interesting that a terrorist group has been designated that. i don't believe another group has. so what the challenge is that the united states has in tackling a group and a terrorist group having also committed human rights atrocity. >> that's a good question. it was an unusual move. it's not something we typically do with terrorist groups. we never declared al qaeda to be guilty of genocide. it's a label

that fits with isis. you see what's going on in the airy and there's a systematic instruction of culture in the society. it will not deter, i would say that they would be perpetrators of genocide but is it acts of a community of nations including our muslim allies and friends in the region to call this what it is. and try to hold it accountable in a global way. i think it's a powerful powerful message and it's something we need to do aso opposed to some practical way. but but it is it an interestingi step. >> i noticed in the maps you showed that it seems as though isis hasn't made it to morocco. why is that? >> some countries like morocco, like jordan to, they have aathek problem, they have local cells and deal with them, sometimes serious problems, but so far

there hasn't been any ability to these groups to organize in a serious way that we are aware. it's partly reflected of thecul security culture in those are countries, they are very good at their internal security and knowing what people are doing. it also may be an unknown factor. we for two months we see the plot but they don't seem to have the grip that they do another countries. >> i was wondering if you could talk a bit more about the financials of isis. so the have access to a lot ofy natural resources and capital but how are they actually able to turn that into cash and who do they purchase from? how does that work? >> the thing about isis is there much more self-sufficient in terms of their funding the most other terrorist groups people have looked at. in in the beginning they may have benefited from people, more recently there looking using what's available to them very locally. they're selling it t on the and people with turkey who aren't worth him but they do a black

market trade.local civili c their taxing local civilians ano collecting fines for almost any fence that you can imagine can be a finance collected by isis. more recently after taking over territory they have big assets. muzzle has said that they're able to accommodate in hard currency, euros, dollars, and it so that the cash economy anyway they have more cash than they can possibly spend and to give it respective of what they need us to pay their soldiers and do various things but to carry out terrorist attacks from abroad doesn't cost that much for the estimate for the cost from start to finish of the paris attack is somewhere around 10,000 dollars. so. so they have will more than enough to carry out attacks like that for years to come.

>> i have a personal question, but before that when you went to the slides he pointed out a lot of the individuals were just angry and they just wanted explosives, they just wanted to be of the press. now people said the fellow who had left the bonds and new york were not related to any of these, but he was that kind of person. so maybe this could propagate a lot, encouraging but now the question is are you concerned that some crazy guy is going to come to the washington posts office and either you look at your book as a history of isis so they want to show it around, or they think wow, this, this is a great way of getting into the press by destroying the person who wrote the book. >> that's a good question. it's not something that we blindly dismissed.

i lived in the suburbs with the families they do think about things like that, marty marty is a pretty big ice i think we work in a pretty secure office and we don't feel like anybody's going to come and they do harm to us. the one thing and maybe it's a vein or overly optimistic. i always assumed that a, they like publicity and some bizarre way and secondly there's many more important attractive targets that a journalist from the washington post. so i am very careful when i travel to the region. otherwise the region. otherwise i tried to keep my eyes open and then do a casual review of the line of people waiting to get there signed in action nobody scaring anything that looks like a weapon. it is not an idle thought. >> again, looking at your book is the history of the program. some. some people in isis can show it around to people. you have documented their heroes.

>> that is true. the book, because of the pulitzers coming out in a log of languages including arabic. that's something i think about. thank you. >> i want to ask a question as a journalist admires what you do and appreciate the crafts is believe that your book ranks as an outstanding piece of nonfiction narrative. it is a craft question, sounds like you started with some intelligent agents, presumablyly off the record in jordan, that's my guess, you don't need to describe your sources but how did you, a get access get access to them and then get them towido open up. and then also widen your net to people who had been inside the isis organization. it's and it's down a piece of reporting. >> i appreciate that night thank you to the reference to lawrence wright's book who is one of my heroes. if i'm in the same sentence as him a platter. it is a difficult challenge. ini part of what help me was the

fact that i've been doing this for a long time. so while overtime you build up relationships with intelligenceo people and that's not an easy thing to develop. and this country with our agencies and the ones overseas to travel to the region quite a bit. i ended up getting remarkably strong responses when i approach people in these governmentszarq about telling the zaccaro wet nd story because this is important subject for them. they feel like it needs to be understood. some of these particular individuals are some that use their arab names but not their real names for obvious reasons. once i got into it there a thrill to talk to me. i had hours and hours of conversation with guys who neveo spoken to another reporter but they were blown away by getting a chance to share their knowledge and tell stories that were so meaningful and important. because i guess one of my gifts as a journalist if i have an issue is approachable and not an agenda and i just want to know. i think i come across that way

and if you just really want to know the facts people can be surprisingly cooperative in that regard. so i think i got lucky there. >> thank you very much. did the king of jordan cooperate with you in one way or another? >> i have to say this is my second book and the first runn also had a jordanian theme and one of the readers of the book and somebody who admired it was the king of jordan. he he actually read the book and commented on it.it's so i felt a little more involvem than when it was time to write this book to ask him and his government, going to tell the story and it's very personal to jordan, it's extremely helpful it's always better to have it. >> it helps if the king of jordan's cooperative. >> he kinda pulled some strings over there. >> thank you so much.ea >> thank you. okay we have two quick questions

and then i'll take him later after it. >> can explain the terminology please, you speak of isis, heard some officials speak of isil and then in addition i heard others use the term -- if i can get a ray with using da'esh i would use that. the reason as it blows down to an attempt to trans iterate arabic which does not happen easily. what isis called himself as the islamic state. but it's the ironic state of islamic state which sean which is a big region ignoring the history of the last century, ignoring countries that were that did not exist hundred ten years ago's.s.t lumps just lumping it together with this place and so when you hear isis people think -- and people

think of the english term and some people called it isil. so not trying to be clever it's just a struggle to figure out a proper way to transliterate the words but thank you for that. >> will do one more. >> my question is, what role ife any do you feel that our media here in europe play in creating an atmosphere [inaudible] on. >> that's a good question, it's something that we wrestle with at the washington post. we do take very seriously the fact that our work sometime can agitate and excite so if you try to be restrained like were having a discussion about an article that involves videos, how much to ow