michelle goldberg. [applause] [inaudible conversations] >> c-span, where history unfolds daily. in 1979, c-span was created as a public service by amerigas cable television companies and is brought to you today by your cable and satellite provider. >> james o'keefe, how did you get started with project veritas? >> i got started at rutgers university in college, surrounded by political correctness and people trying

to shut others down. it outraged me and it was very upsetting. it angered me that there was lack of freedom of thought on college campus. things have gotten much worse. this sort of contempt and the anger of injustice and that got me started at rutgers university. >> host: was there a specific incident that got you started? >> guest: they had things -- they sold sandwiches and some had offensive names. one was called the fact bench. they put duct tape over the name censoring the names of these sandwiches. this whole outcry, in response to that we tried to ban lucky charms, the breakfast cereal on the ground that it was racist against irish people.

it was a joke, it was satire but university officials took us seriously and we recorded the encounter and the video went viral on campus in 2005. >> host: in 2010 you were in new orleans. >> being arrested. >> there's a lot of misinformation about that. i was arrested, showed my real drivers license when i entered this federal building. i wasn't pretending to be something i wasn't, i showed my real drivers license but i was arrested by the authorities and they were going to let me go when they found out i was james -- james o'keefe with a story about hidden cameras, these authorities conjured up a crime against me. if it was just entering my false pretenses they conjured up this felony tampering with

the phone system. the majority of the book talks about abuse and resigned in disgrace, they were leaking, blocking anonymously about me. it is really an abuse of power and i'm grateful pled guilty t misdemeanor being in the federal building but it was abuse of power by the federal government in louisiana. >> host: why breakthrough? why that name? >> so much of what we do is circumventing the mainstream media and getting the news out and in front of people. it is hard to break through to the mainstream media these days. we did a story on cnn, cnn

didn't mention a word about it and the notion of being on the front page of the new york times, getting anderson cooper to talk about your number one video on youtube or trending on twitter, there's a chapter in breakthrough where we talk about a story on congressman james moran's son talking about voting multiple times and the story is crescendoing on twitter and facebook, million people tweeting about it and only at that point do the powers that be in the new york times decide we need to talk about this, need the mainstream media to talk about something they don't wish to talk about, that is what we call a breakthrough. >> host: do you consider your politics to be conservative? where did you grow up? >> guest: no i don't. one of the things that motivates me is injustice was

when andrew breitbart died, it was about injustice, being a counterbalance. i have always -- people in my team are motivated by severe injustice in our society and investigative journalism. if it is right wing to expose the views of power and fraud and corruption and government spending money they shouldn't, call me names if you want, doesn't matter what you call us. they deal in characterization and innuendo, i am a right-winger, criminal, contract, doesn't matter what word you use to describe us, the chicago sun-times in the 1970s won pulitzer prizes for going with the hidden camera into a voting booth and exposing the ease with which people could commit voter fraud. we have done that dozens of times and we resigned to the fact we will never win a war but we are resurrecting a type

of journalism that was done 40 or 50 years ago. the difference is the proliferation of technology, means of distribution getting the message to millions of people, i wouldn't characterize myself as right wing. we are trying not to do that, trying to revolutionize information and get people reality. i can't change the nature of reality. i can't alter what i'm filming. i don't deal in characterization or description, i deal with exposing the world as it is. >> host: you have been accused of selective editing. >> guest: if you look at specific criticism nothing is significant, katie couric did deceptively editor documentary and been sued for defamation. the washington post retracted headline about me. i never had to make such a retraction. these are obvious occasion and ad hominem. there's nothing else for them to say. i have gotten mainstream media to print hundreds of corrections about me.

i never in my career made a mistake arises to the level they made. mainstream media uses anonymous sources. i don't have a problem with using anonymous sources but you can't only use anonymous sources to make your point. you have to use them sparingly and be credible. a lot of these, i use the example of the washington post who literally had to retract a headline about me three weeks ago. the headline was james o'keefe selectively edited this out. i did not selectively edit out the fact in question. he retracted that. why isn't everyone saying he selectively edits? he did retract his article. if you look closely at the facts. i never actually specifically made any specific edit, they are just using that term as a characterization ad hominem attack against me. this is how they work and that

is what i am fighting. >> host: you mentioned saul lewinsky. were his tactics, did they work? >> guest: they were enormously effective. i moderated a panel at freedom fest between the son of saul lewinsky, he appealed to people's self-interest. he was antagonistic. he didn't appeal to be sense of urgency or the christian ethic. he appealed to self-interest, how to give power to these people. many things he wrote in rules for radicals were about giving to the have-nots. i view our mission as very similar as far as the mainstream media does not give you information. george stephanopoulos says voter fraud does not exist. it is not possible to commit voter fraud. our mission is to say this is possible and it is true.

in many ways, mobilizing power to the citizens to get the information out. i think saul lewinsky is respected. he was appealing to an antagonistic sort of what is in your self-interest, pitting groups against one another. you can say that is left or right, don't think it is dogmatic, just a sort of accepting the world as it is and the way human beings operate and he recruited people in the churches, organized in the churches. solomons he was a contributing reason a lot of churches are democratic voting blocs. he was effective, not dogmatic. >> host: is there any concern about filming people when they are not aware of it? is there and unfairness their? >> guest: i don't believe so.

i think it is necessary. the information is of extreme public interest. the big stories life was earthshaking, we can't cnn's supervising producer on tape saying the ceo of cnn, told him to drop his investigative journalism and only focus on russia. he said it was all about money. do we want to live in a world where people are secretly recorded in elevators? probably not. but in some cases it is of look extreme public interest to show this. i will go into someone's private bedroom. we did one story where a guy with in a motel room, and attorney general of maryland, supposed to be at a taxpayer-funded conference, try to avoid the personal sexual nature of people's lives but when you are talking about matters of extreme public interest, the hidden camera, they used when pulitzer prizes in chicago for doing things. they rented a bar in chicago

for a year called the mirage and put hidden cameras for one year at this bar in 1975-76 and recorded all these conversations and wrote about the man's got bribes and backs and all these things. it is a powerful tool and big responsibility. we have to use it sparingly but if you want to talk about deception and selective editing look no further than these anonymous sources. we don't know what they are saying to the new york times. we can see what they are saying or read their intuition, we don't know -- we have to trust the reliability of the institution and that has become corrupted in my opinion. >> host: how many projects does project veritas have? >> guest: i can't say that. >> host: more than one? >> guest: more than one. our main target is the media. i can tell your audience what i made a promise i always

delivered. the ball i was going to expose the mainstream media and we did. i was going to be more cases coming here and they will be real big, significant and the media is not doing its duty and they need to come to terms with what they told us undercover, all about money and profit. laziness, greed, lack of courage. these are the things we will be exposing and very significant. >> host: who is nadia who you're right about in breakthrough? >> guest: an individual who was working in a political operation to sabotage me in a personal way. i am a marked man. people have tried to set me up, target me. the difference is she tried to create a false accusation in

court and create evidence, the judge threw it out as completely bogus but this is why people don't do what i do because you get falsely accused. the difference is we film the world as it is with hidden cameras, we pose as something we are not but we don't manufacture, we don't create false evidence. i wish nadia had filmed what happened because it would show that happens but that is not how these people work. they are very machiavelli and. andrew breitbart, my mentor, told me they had an interest in not humanizing me. to do so would be to show that i am passionate and care about justice, they don't want to do. they want me to seem like a criminal, and evil person.

these are the battles i have been arrested and targeted with death and it is a deterrent to other people and if nothing else when i go to conferences like this speak to people it is to give them hope and say let's join together. project veritas is about bringing more journalists on board. they can't shut me down, they won't shut us down and that is the message of breakthrough. >> host: house project veritas funded? >> guest: we are a nonprofit. half of our donations come from $5, $10, $100 contributions for we are crowd source funding. no one has fiduciary control over me, no one tells us what to do, we just pursue stories of public interest. many of our stories lean to the right, i challenge any of the anchors on these networks why their stories lean so heavily to the left. they call us conservative activists. why don't you call rachel maddow a conservative activist? like her i don't take a political position. if you look closely at the book i don't say anything overtly

political. that is how we are funded and that is what we stand for. >> host: one with what you do that some of these death threats etc. you might get a little paranoid. >> guest: there is no need. >> host: paranoid, keep an eye on your shoulder. >> guest: i used to be pretty glib about it. i truly don't -- i didn't get into this worrying about safety. anytime you do this kind of work is safety of your number one concern you need a different occupation. we have taken certain precautions and i can't get into what those precautions are but there are significant and serious and we take it very seriously. there are people who want to shut us down and they don't like what we are exposing. i take it very seriously. i can't tell you what we are doing as a precaution. of the 19 you have another book

coming out. >> guest: i can't get into the details. the publisher doesn't want me to. it will be at the end of this year. there is some extraordinary information about things we have coming up next probably after labor day, the next big bombshell on the mainstream media. we have the tapes already, the tapes are secured and you will see those come out. the this is one of the things it talks about is called american progress, the series of videos we are doing talks about all these networks we had embargoed the material on these stories, they spiked the story, spiked at the last minute because they were afraid of retaliation by the government. mainstream media networks are freight report truisms for fear of fdc revoking their license. the next book tells this amazing story.

my meetings with donald trump and the interactions we had and what it all means, stay tuned for that. we 19 james o'keefe is the author of this book, breakthrough:our guerrilla war to expose fraud and save democracy. this is booktv on c-span2 at freedom fest in las vegas. .. featuring biographer jonathan hyde talking about mohammed ali. talk radio host erick erickson and many others. for a complete schedule visit our website at book tv.org. you can also follow us on social media or on twitter facebook and instagram book tv.

also airing this weekend on a afterwards program the life and career of newt gingrich. also, national book award winning officer, hasse coats in elliot abrams the former official in the reagan and george w bush administration argues that despite the outcome of the arab spring the u.s. should push for the expansion of democracy in the middle east. forty-eight hours of nonfictional authors and books. it is television for serious readers. here is nobel prize winning a commonest -- economist with unemployment and climate change.